MIDDLESEX COUNTY was incorporated by an act of the Legislature passed at the May session, 1785, and at that time consisted of six towns. Of these, Middletown, Chatham, Haddam, and East Haddam were taken from the county of Hartford, and Saybrook and Killingworth from New London county. Durham was annexed to the county in May 1799, from the county of New Haven. New towns have been erected from the original six till the number is now fifteen. From the first Middletown and Haddam have been half shire towns, and public buildings have been erected and maintained in each.
The form of the county is irregular. Its average length between north and south is twenty-seven miles, and its average width from east to west is about fourteen. Its general boundaries are Hartford county on the north, New London county on the east, Long Island Sound on the south, and New Haven county on the west.
The surface of Middlesex county is generally uneven. On the margin of the sound is an area of from half a mile to two miles in width that is comparatively level, as are also small areas in other parts of the county.
A range of wide hills passes obliquely through the county from southwest to northeast, crossing the Connecticut River at a place called the “Straits,” and passing thence to the interior of New England. On the western borders of Middletown and Durham are Wallingford Mountains, some of which are known by distinct names, as Higby Mountain, from a settler near it, and Lamentation Mountain, the origin of the name of which is uncertain.
From the sides and bases of the many hills in the county issue springs which form brooks that gather into larger streams. These, as they pass onward to discharge their waters into the Connecticut River, afford valuable water power, which is extensively utilized for mills and manufactories.
The Connecticut River passes in a general southeasterly course through the county, separating the towns of Portland, Chatham, and East Haddam on the east from the other towns on the west of it. The same name (spelled Connectiquot) was applied by the Indians on Long Island to a river in Suffolk county, N. Y. In the Indian tongue it meant the Long River, and here it gave its name to the State. It rises in Canada, on the southern side of the watershed which separates the waters that pass through the St. Lawrence from those that go south through New England. At the point where it enters the United States it is no more than ten rods in width. For a distance of about two hundred miles it forms the boundary between Vermont and New Hampshire, receiving affluents from the Green Mountains on the west, and from the White Mountains of New Hampshire. It passes centrally through Franklin, Hampshire, and Hamden counties in Massachusetts, and Hartford county in this State, receiving in its course through these counties large affluents on both sides. It passes through the northern part of Middlesex county and between this and New London counties to its mouth in Long Island Sound.
The river varies in width through and along this county from thirty-five rods at the straits to more than one hundred in other places. The tide sets back in this river as far as Hartford, to which point it is navigated by steamboats as well as sailing vessels. Its minimum depth is about ten feet at high tide, and it has an average depth of fifteen feet. The ship channels in the river undergo changes from time to time by reason of natural or artificial changes along its banks.
There are several islands in the course of the river through this county. These undergo gradual changes, some of them being augmented in area by the deposit of sediment, especially during freshets, and some are diminished or even obliterated by the erosion of their shores, while others are formed around temporary obstructions of the current, then increased by the deposit of sediment in the eddies below them.
The current of the river is usually gentle, except at the Straits, some two miles below Middletown, and here it is necessarily more violent, especially during the ebbing of the tide.
The river is subject to freshets, especially at the melting of the snows in this vicinity in the spring, and later, when the snow and ice dissolve at the sources of the river and its tributaries in the mountains above. At such times the obstruction at the Straits, of the large volume of the water tends to increase and prolong the floods above, and ice-packs have been known to occur at this narrow part of the river’s course, which, by damming the waters, have occasioned much damage. These freshets, however, greatly fertilize the lands which are overflowed.
This river and its tributaries formerly abounded with fish, and the taking of these in their season was once an important branch of industry; but the number that frequent these waters, especially of the more valuable varieties, has so diminished, that the business has dwindled into comparative insignificance. Field said, in 1818: “There are eighty places where shad are now caught in the season of fishing, beginning about the middle of April and ending in the middle of June, viz.: 26 in Saybrook, 17 in Haddam, 16 or 17 in Middletown, 13 in Chatham, and 5 in East Haddam. At the fish places in Saybrook there were salted, in 1817, according to the report of the deputy inspector, 2,194 barrels of shad; at the fish places in Haddam, 146 barrels; and at those in East Haddam, 169; making a total of 2,509 barrels.”
Middlesex county was, when first settled, covered with a heavy growth of timber. The principal varieties were oak, walnut, and chestnut on the high grounds, and maple, birch, beech, elm, ash, and hemlock on the declivities of the hills and in the valleys. Interspersed among these were other varieties, and, in some portions of the county, pitch pine, as well as white pine and cedar, were found. The grand old trees of the primitive forests have long since fallen “beneath the woodman’s sturdy strokes,” and a later growth is permitted to flourish only on lands least valuable for other purposes. At first much of this timber had so little value, that it was often burned to make way for the plough. The more valuable varieties were converted into lumber for building houses or ships, and, as the demand for fuel in neighboring cities and towns increased, greater economy was exercised with the less valuable varieties. But for the substitution of mineral coal for the fuel which the timber growth formerly supplied, the entire surface would long since have been denuded of even the meagre growth which remains.
The wild animals that traversed the forests on the hills and in the valleys of this region have long since disappeared. The bear was destroyed, because of his depredations on the pig-styes and corn-fields of the early inhabitants; the wolf, that once made night hideous with his howls, that ravaged the sheep-folds of the settlers, and was at times the terror of the belated traveler, has been exterminated or driven to northern forests; the stealthy panther and lynx have fled before the advance of civilization; and the harmless and timid deer, that cropped the herbage on the hillsides, has been hunted for his palatable flesh and useful skin till the last of his kind long since ceased to exist here. Other animals disappeared as their changing environments became unfavorable to their continuance, and many years have elapsed since any of the original denizens of the forests here have been seen.
Source
Whittemore, Henry, History of Middlesex county, Connecticut, with biographical sketches of its prominent men, New York : J. B. Beers & Co., 1884.
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