HISTORY OF MY BIRTHPLACE

“Awareness is the birthplace of possibility. Everything you want to do, everything you want to be, starts here.” Deepak Chopra

My birthplace in Pomfret, Connecticut in New England was named after the old English town of Pontefract in Yorkshire, England.

Many years prior, this land had been purchased from Native Americans by a Major Fitch for 30 pounds, and was known as the “Mashamoquet Purchase” This Mohegan word meant “a stream of great fishing” and also named the largest of three important streams in Pomfret.

Mashamoquet Brook later became a state park. A popular landmark in the park called the Wolf Den, was made famous by General Israel Putnam, nicknamed “Old Put” at the Battle of Bunker Hill during the Revolutionary War. He distinguished himself much earlier in his hometown of Pomfret by tracking down a predator of farmers’ sheep, goats and poultry, the last known wolf in Connecticut.