The Pinnacle, New Preston, Connecticut

Photos by Carol A. Hanny

The Pinnacle is east of Lake Waramaug. This bald-topped, windswept mountain has puzzled me. Basically, there is a triangle of huge boulders pointing to true north, a semi-circle of stones and Hebrew inscriptions. I think, after much time spent there taking calculations, thinking it may be a solstice site, going up there in -30 wind chill, coming down the trail when it was so dark we couldn't see our hands in front of our faces, ducking behind the rocks attempting to stay out of the wind......that the components are not related. I think the triangle is a triangulation point for early mappers, probably from Yale. (I think it points to Mohawk Mountain, the next point to triangulate from.) I think the semicircle, with fire scars to back up my thesis, is from the indians, a place for a warning fire, like that placed on Mohawk Mountain when the Mohawks were raiding. The view southeast, south and southwest from there is amazing. All would see it. The inscriptions, all in Hebrew, are probably from some miners that walked up to the top of the hill for lunch and the breeze, and like all humans, left their marks. (There is a quartz mine you pass on the trail up there.) I would appreciate any information anyone has to offer on this site.

I apologize for the photos, but they are the best you can get up there. It is next to impossible to get a photo of the triangle in one picture.

Part of the triangle of stones
Yet another part of the triangle
A view of all three, but only a small part of the one on the right
The semicircle of stones
One of the four Hebrew inscriptions
See text for translation
NEW INFO added 6-8-00
From "A History of Lake Waramaug"
by Mary Harwood
-for the Lake Waramaug Association
1996

-quote from page 61

THE PINNACLE AND THE MYSTERY OF THE STONE CARVINGS

The summit of this mountain is crowned with granite, treeless and shrubless and covered with glacial scratchings. The rock has been vandalized for endless years with carvings of names, initials, and so forth. There are also four biblical names carved in Hebrew: Adam, Issac, Moses, and Abram. In 1789, Dr. Ezra Stiles, president of Yale College, was the first to make an official record of these carvings with drawings of each name. His report is still on file in the Beinecke Library at Yale. Stiles believed that the source of these carvings had been a group of Jewish miners, circa 1780, prospecting for minerals or potential mines in the Cornwall, Kent, and New Milford area. And the inscriptions were said to have been a memorial to their companions who had died in the course of the expedition.

Archaeologists have explored this site on the Pinnacle for over two hundred years and written it up in books and articles. Well, the world is full of surprises. The explanation for the Hebrew carvings was recently found at the Gunn Historical Museum, Washington, Connecticut. It was tucked away in an early ledger for the general store in New Preston. No date was given, but judging from the early rag-paper on which it was written and also from the facts presented, it dates from the late 1700s to early 1800s. It was written by John Buckingham of Marble Dale. He spoke specifically of "the characters engraved on the Pinnacle rock that have been the subject of much wonder. Many learned men have examined them, but they remain a mystery . . .The truth has been given me by a grandson of the individual who engraved them . . .Ebenezer Beeman, an eccentric who made pretensions to great learning and had in his possession a Hebrew and Greek dictionary, went to the top of the rock in 1774, taking with him some books and tools. He attempted to engrave the names of Issac, Moses, Adam, and Abraham. The last name was unfinished on account of a heavy thunder shower . . . This, I am told, may be relied on as a true account of those Mysterious Characters."

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