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Silver Lane |
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ON THE WAY to join Washington's forces in 1781, The French Main Army under General Rochambeau marched in four divisions through Voluntown, Plainfield, Canterbury and Windham before settling down for an extended period in the town of East Hartford. The elegant French soldiery was followed day after day by sturdy baggage wagons and carts, bearing chests of silver heavily guarded by special elite forces. When the troops reached their main quarters in East Hartford, the silver was stored in the James Forbes House, where the army paymaster drew on the hoard, so tradition says, to pay the soldiers. For the people of colonial Connecticut, where a silver coin was as rare as a Roman Catholic prayer book, the sight of all those Frenchmen spending their silver wildly in the community inspired commemoration of a permanent sort. So a main road near the center of Rochambeau's encampment was called Silver Lane -- and so it remains today. Incidentally, as testimony to the free-spending ways of the French soldiers, silver coins dating to the time of the encampment have reportedly been unearthed from time to time in the vicinity of Silver Lane, even in recent years.
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