Norwalk had settled at
Danbury, from Stratford at Woodbury, from Milford at Derby, and from
Farmington at Waterbury. With these exceptions, hardly more than pin
points upon the map, and a few settlements about Albany, N. Y., the
whole of western and northwestern Connecticut and of western
Massachusetts and northern New York was a savage wilderness, covered
with dense forests, and affording almost perfect concealment for the
operations of savage warfare.

Though the northwestern portion of Connecticut was then a most
formidable and inhospitable wilderness, strenuous efforts were already
being put forth by the Colony to encourage its settlement. For, strange
as it seems to us now, at that time, owing to imperfect modes of
cultivation and the difficulty of subduing the wilderness, the settled
portions of the Commonwealth had begun to feel overpopulated.
Twenty-five years before, the Secretary of the Colony had reported to
the Home Government, that "in this mountainous, rocky and swampy
province" most of the arable land was taken up, and the remainder was
hardly worth tillage.

This need of more land, and the protection from invasion which the
settlement of this section would afford the communities near the coast,
and the innate love of adventure and desire to subdue the wilderness
which have characterized the American people from the beginning, were
the impelling causes which led to the planting of New Milford.

So pressing did this movement become that, though what is now Litchfield
County was then as remote and inaccessible to the rest of the Colony, as
were Indiana and Illinois to our fathers in the middle of the last
century, within forty-five years after the first settler had built his
log cabin and lighted his fire here, twelve towns had been settled and
the county organized with a population of more than ten thousand.

In order that we may appreciate, somewhat, the broader political
conditions under which the first settlers took up their abode here,
which largely engrossed their thoughts and vitally affected them and
their children for two generations, it is necessary, before taking up
the narrative of their actual settlement here, to advert briefly to the
state of affairs at that time in England, and on the continent of
Europe, and in the English, French and Spanish Colonies of North
America.

By 1707, it had become apparent to the people of Connecticut that, soon
or late, they must fight for the very existe