The Windham Frog Fight

WHETHER THEY CALL it the Battle of the Frogs, the Bull Frog Fright or -- by those leaning toward a little Latinate alliteration -- the Big Batrachian Battle, an incident that almost literally scared the pants off the inhabitants of Windham Center in 1754 has been celebrated in story and song for more than 200 years. Because the "singular occurrence" came at a time when the last French and Indian War was getting underway, the scattered settlements in eastern Connecticut were pretty tense and watchful to begin with. In Windham, the people were especially anxious, since one of their most prominent citizens, Col. Eliphalet Dyer, an attorney in civilian life, had just raised a regiment prior to joining the expedition against Crown Point. With many of the town's able young men already off fighting the "savages" with Gen. Israel Putnam, rumors of massacres and assorted bloodletting regularly circulated among the folks back home.
Then, on a dark, cloudy, steamy night in June, according to the most reliable witnesses, it happened. After family prayers had been duly performed, the residents of the settlement retired to rest, and for several hours all enjoyed a period of well-earned sleep. Just after midnight, however, their peaceful slumbers were abruptly ended by a noise so loud and hideous that they rose from their beds in one horrified mass of humanity.
The frightful clamor seemed to be coming from right over their heads and from all directions at once, a shrieking, clattering, thunderous roar such as never had been heard on earth before. To some it sounded like the yells and war whoops of attacking Indians. To others it was the last ding-dong of doom, announcing the arrival of Judgment Day. However, one elderly black man, wiser than his neighbors, was said to have protested that decision, arguing that the Day of Judgment could not occur at night. The general terror was increased when many villagers swore that they could distinguish particular names, like DYER and ELDERKIN (another local lawyer and militia colonel), reverberating, at intervals, across the heavens, as if in awful summons.
As the unholy uproar increased, citizens began to react according to their own peculiar lights. Parson White, who had been aroused by his Negro servant (one of the first to hear the sound as he returned home from some midnight frolic), did what came naturally. He rushed with his wife and children into the garden next to the parish house. There, among the bean poles and early peas, the trembling family fell on their knees and offered up an agony of prayer. From almost every house, old and young, male and female stumbled into the streets, many "in puris naturalibus" (i.e., buck naked), their eyes upturned, trying to pierce the palpable darkness around them.
Meanwhile, a handful of citizens less superstitious than the rest had concluded that the village was under siege by a large band of Indian warriors. Nothing daunted, these valiant villagers loaded their muskets and energetically pumped volley after volley into the murky gloom, until all their powder was expended. Several of the more daring musketeers were even bold enough to climb Mullin Hill, an elevation east of the village green, where they discovered that the sound did not come from the skies, as first believed, but from an area toward the foot of the incline, still farther to the east. None, however, dared to venture in that direction until the source of the noise could be determined for sure. They say that one member of this brave band, an elderly man named Stoughton, who had been rushing about simultaneously firing his rifle and brandishing a sword, was finally overcome by age and fear, and fell to his knees in noisy prayer. Taken altogether, it was not a pretty sight.
However, as the darkness slowly gave way to sullen dawn, the banshee sounds in the air seemed gradually to die away. As Windhamites of all persuasions slowly rose from their knees or hung up their muskets, they clustered in little groups to exchange questions or banded together to search the village perimeter for answers. In the light of day, it soon became apparent that no Indians had been in the vicinity the previous night, and since no one had been killed or died of a heart attack, the Day of Judgment had certainly not been at hand either.
It wasn't long, though, before the news began to get around that someone had discovered the awful truth, while riding down by Col. Dyer's pond, two miles east of the green, where the Follet family operated a grist mill. As people gathered there to witness the source of the previous night's panic, a curious spectacle was spread before them. Around the shore of the small mill pond and along the banks of the little stream that bubbled out of the pond to the south, lay the belly-up bodies of hundreds, maybe even thousands of bullfrogs!
It seems that the area had been in a state of severe drought for many weeks, causing the pond to be reduced to little more than a puddle. As the water became shallower and shallower, the heavy frog population was sorely affected. On the night of the horrible outcry, something must have finally snapped in the frog community. And as one after another the frogs desperately sought a few drops of water in pond or outlet ditch, they inevitably encroached on some neighbor's wet space. The result was a batrachian battle royal, complete with the anguished croaks of the dying, and little green casualties beyond any accurate body count. Owing, perhaps, to some peculiar state of the atmosphere, the horrible noise of combat appeared to the afflicted Windhamites to be directly over their heads. Thus, considering all the circumstances, it was not surprising that many distressing events occurred that night among the panicky people of the "village of bull frogs."
It is also not surprising that ever since that dark June night, Windhamites have been subjected to all manner of jokes and jests about bullfrogs. For years, no history of Connecticut was complete without some pun-laden or exaggerated description of the night the frogs put the fear of God into the folks in Windham Center. For example, in his History of Connecticut, the Rev. Samuel Peters, a notorious inventor of "facts," in an effort to improve his account of the battle, set the croaker casualty list at over five million! Popular poetasters, too, have waded in with such rhymed inventions as "A True Relation of a Strange Battle Between Some Lawyers and Bull-Frogs Set Forth in a New Song, Written by a Jolly Farmer of New England"; a 44-verse ballad called "The Bull-Frog Fight," published in the Boston Museum in 1851; and the Rev. Theron Brown's humorous "Epic of Windham," read at the town's bicentennial celebration in 1892. The great frog fight even served as the basis for a riotous 1893 operetta, The Frogs of Windham, which, they say, must have been excruciating not only to those who witnessed a performance, but also to the descendants of those who played leading roles in the original plot. The operetta featured a dozen major solo parts, several extensive dances and a cast of seventy performers, including Indians, frogs, local folk, Gypsies and even a fanciful English nobleman.
Yet, while some Windhamites may have felt the mortification passed on by their ancestors and the words of a hundred jingling verses, the majority of townspeople have come to terms with their untoward celebrity, even to the point of turning it to some advantage. The infamous Frog Pond (for so Col. Dyer's mill pond has been called since that dismal night in 1754) has been prominently marked by the local D.A.R. chapter with a huge granite boulder and bronze tablet commemorating the frog fight legend. When the Old Windham Bank issued its own notes back in the nineteenth century, the directors thought it entirely appropriate that their paper "greenbacks" should be embellished with the likenesses of two grumpy Windham "greenbacks," fresh from the Frog Pond.
Historians have also reported that the architects who drew the plans for the present Windham Town Hall made provision for two ample granite slabs in front, each designed to support a massive granite frog. However, whether tender feelings or tender purses prevailed, the sculptured frogs never materialized and the slabs remain today unencumbered by croakers. But, though modern visitors to Town Hall are not greeted by groaners at the gates, yet one reminder of Windham's genuine affection for the frog lives on: in the center of the official Seal of the Town of Windham squats a baleful bullfrog.
Considered together, the missing Town Hall frogs and the permanent town emblem would seem to confirm the mixed sentiments about the Windham frog fight expressed in a venerable verse on the subject: Some were well pleased, and some were mad, Some turned it off with laughter. And some would never hear a word, About the thing thereafter. Some vowed if the De'il himself Should come they would not flee him, And if a frog they ever met, Pretended not to see him.

from Legendary Connecticut by David E. Philips / ISBN 1-880684-05-5 / $17.95

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