Dudleytown,Cursed Village

ON A HILLY plateau surrounded by four l500-foot mountains, and overlooking the village of Cornwall Bridge, in Connecticut's northwestern-most corner, there once was a thriving community which seemed -- at least for a time -- to have all the advantages. Here, long before the white man came, Mohawk Indians hunted the gentle deer and gathered wild herbs for medicinal teas or a tangy root beer, made in the full moon of May or June. Among the great stands of oak, maple and chestnut, the owls which were to give the lasting nickname of "Owlsbury" to the village, hooted mournfully, from the heavy shade of noon to the darkest hours of the night. As part of the general movement inland from the coastal regions of Connecticut, the first English settlers began to arrive here in the middle years of the eighteenth century. In 1738 Thomas Griffis was the first to take title to real estate on this high land in the southern part of Cornwall township, but he was soon followed by others, families with names like Jones, Carter, Porter, Patterson, Tanner, Rogers, Dibble and others, some of whom would one day find fame in various pursuits. Not until 1747 did the first Dudleys arrive. Brothers Abiel and Barzillai Dudley, soldiers home from the French and Indian Wars, were joined a bit later by Gideon and Abijah Dudley. Along with other early arrivals, the Dudleys cleared the land, planted buckwheat, killed deer for their winter food supply and established their farms on the irregular upland plain. Not only were the industrious Dudleys destined to give their family name to the growing community, but also -- in the certain estimation of many they were responsible for the "curse" which a century or so later would help transform the thriving village into a crumbling ghost town. For a hundred years Dudleytown expanded and prospered, thanks to the hard work, strong constitutions and versatile skills of the thirty to forty families who lived there through many generations. During the last quarter of the eighteenth century, many of them prospered from the booming iron industry centered around the great furnace on nearby Mt. Riga. During the Revolutionary War, almost every Dudleytown family augmented its farming pursuits by cutting and burning wood for charcoal to stoke the many furnaces in the area, while some even operated their own backyard smelters, fed by locally-mined ore and heated with local "wood-coal." By 1800, Dudleytown had its own town hall and meeting house; improved thoroughfares, like Dudleytown and Dark Entry Roads, to accommodate the heavy traffic of horses and riders; and a growing number of quite substantial houses. There was no visible sign then that the village would ever be anything but permanent and prosperous, its future assured by the abundance of nature and the character of its inhabitants. Indeed, during its green years, Dudleytown produced an extraordinary number of citizens who went on to achieve fame or to build distinguished careers in Connecticut and elsewhere. For instance, Mary T. Cheney, a native of Dudleytown, went away to teach school and later became the wife of Horace Greeley, founder of the New York Tribune, advocate of a western youth movement and unsuccessful presidential candidate in 1872. The village had an even closer brush with the White House when Samuel Jones Tilden, grandson of Dudleytown's Major Samuel Jones, received one less vote than Rutherford B. Hayes in the 1876 electoral college balloting. No one, then, blamed the Dudleytown jinx. Other Dudleytowners had eminent careers in education, the ministry or the law. Deacon Thomas Porter, churchman, militia captain, selectman and member of the Cornwall School Board, moved north in his later years and became a Vermont Supreme Court judge. His son, Ebenezer, born in Dudleytown, gained national recognition as president of Andover Seminary. He is said to have turned down several offers to become a college president because of a chronic pulmonary ailment. The sons of Andrew Andrews, who moved into Gideon Dudley's place after Gideon's death, became prominent Connecticut lawyers. Benajah practiced in Middletown, while his brother Andre was Connecticut's State's Attorney, before moving to Buffalo, New York, where he died of cholera. Among Nathaniel Carter's grandchildren was David C. Carter, who became an Arkansas newspaper editor, Chief Justice at the Cherokee Nation and an important figure in national Indian affairs. And one of General George Washington's trusted advisors, General Herman Swift, was an early Dudleytown resident who later removed to another section of Cornwall before finally sitting on the bench of the Litchfield County Court. Yet, despite the steady rise of Dudleytown and the worldly success of so many of its sons and daughters, dark forces, too, seemed to be operating in "Owlsbury." Something -- some malevolent spirit, some terrible ill-fortune -- dogged the village's every step forward, until, in the period following the Civil War, that unknown "something" began to catch up with the little town. None could reverse -- or adequately explain -- the decline and fall of the once proud village at the end of the nineteenth century. Gradually, the descendants of the original settlers moved away or died, often under tragic circumstances. With no new families moving in to occupy the abandoned homesteads, the houses that had stood for a hundred years crumbled, their massive, hand-hewn beams collapsing into dank cellar-holes, to decay among the shattered shards of vital life, beneath protective blankets of wild tiger lilies. Untrimmed brush and vines turned Dark Entry and Dudleytown Roads into little more than tangled hiking trails, as high in the foliage of the second-growth trees that cast the remains of Dudleytown into perpetual gloom, the inevitable owls pronounced melancholy judgment on the passing scene below. Grave historians have explained that the death of Dudleytown came as a result of "natural" causes: the opening of great expanses of farmland in the West; improved means of transporting western products to distant markets; the cutting over of the area's forests and the depletion of its soil; the development of the Bessemer process for making steel; the gradual growth of modern industry in urban centers, which caused young people from places like Dudleytown to seek economic opportunity elsewhere. While there may be some truth to the historians' analyses, there are many old-timers in Cornwall today who are convinced beyond the shadow of any academic's doubt that Dudleytown's demise can properly be assigned to only one cause -- the "curse of the Dudleys." They will cite chapter and verse (if they will discuss it at all with strangers) to support their belief that from the very beginning, Dudleytown didn't have a chance. They say that the trouble really started way back in the reign of England's despotic King Henry VII (1485-1509), when some early ancestors of the Dudleys who first came to America met untimely ends. In the early years of the sixteenth century, one Edmund Dudley had his head chopped off on orders of the King, after he made himself a general nuisance among favored members of the court circle. Later, Edmund's son, John, Duke of Northumberland, plotted to take over the throne from Edward VI by trying to engineer the marriage of his son, Lord Guilford Dudley, to Lady Jane Grey, who had been proclaimed queen for a brief time after Edward died. Some say that Northumberland even had a part in hastening the death of the king. In any event, the elaborate plot failed, and both Dudleys and Lady Jane literally lost their heads over the matter. While all of this was going on, Lord Guilford Dudley's brother returned home from a campaign in France, bringing with him a case of the plague which he promptly passed along to his own troops, killing most of them, as well as thousands of hapless British citizens. To say that the Dudleys were extremely bad news in sixteenth century England would belabor the obvious. The Dudley curse was obviously working overtime! Still another of Guilford Dudley's brothers, the Earl of Leicester, became a favorite of Queen Elizabeth and never lost his head, but even he finally felt obliged to leave England, under mysterious circumstances, never to return. It was Leicester's direct descendant, William Dudley, who was the first to come to Connecticut, settling in Guilford (where else?), on the shores of Long Island Sound. Three of William Dudley's great-grandsons were the ones who gave their family name to their new home in the Cornwall hills, when they moved there from Guilford in the mid- 1700s. People say that the curse transported by William Dudley across the Atlantic to Connecticut lay dormant for a while after his descendants moved to Dudleytown. But not many years passed before one of the Dudley brothers, himself, was touched by the family jinx. The victim was Abiel Dudley, who lived on in the village long after his brothers had departed. He was doomed to spend his declining years as a mentally-enfeebled public charge, his properties managed by a custodian named by the town, his failing body farmed out to the lowest bidder at the annual pauper auction. "Old Biel," as he was called, died at the age of ninety, a pathetic pauper. William Tanner, a neighbor and contemporary of "Biel" Dudley, lived even longer, but for many years before his death at the age of 104, they say he was "half-crazy," and completely dependent upon the constant care of his widowed daughter. Everyone knew that Tanner was never quite right in the head after the murder of Gershorn Hollister, which took place in Tanner's home and generated a lengthy investigation, wide publicity and plenty of small-town gossip. Bearers of the legend of the Dudleytown curse are even more enthusiastic about the terrible trials of the Carter families than they are about the Abiel Dudley or William Tanner tragedies. Around 1700, one Robert Carter had left his native Bristol, England, and migrated, like William Dudley, to Guilford, Connecticut. In the course of time, two of his sons, Adoniram and Nathaniel, found their way to Dudleytown, there to raise their families, they hoped, in peace and comfort. Unfortunately, the Carters came to the wrong place. Nathaniel Carter probably set the curse in motion by purchasing the house formerly occupied by Abiel Dudley and owned by "Biel's" brother, Barzillai, when he moved to Dudleytown in 1759. Married to Sarah Bennett twenty years earlier, Nathaniel had already sired a large family by the time he reached the Cornwall community. Although one of the children died and another married shortly after their arrival in Dudleytown, Nathaniel and Sarah Carter still had five children at home during most of their four-year residence in the old Dudley place. Then Nathaniel made a fateful decision: in 1763, he and his wife, their daughters, Sarah and Elizabeth, their son Nathaniel and an infant son left Dudleytown to settle near Binghamton, New York. For some unknown reason, their thirteen-year-old son, Nathan, was left behind in Dudleytown. Ironically enough, Nathan turned out to be the lucky one! Anyway, the Carters built themselves a log house in the "Forks of the Delaware" wilderness, and settled down to live happily ever after. Alas, it was not to be. In October, 1764, while the elder Nathaniel was away from home, a band of hostile Indians swooped down upon the Carter homestead, split the mother's skull with a tomahawk, dashed the baby's brains out against the log walls of the cabin, burned the house to the ground and carried off the three remaining children into captivity. Not long after, Nathaniel Carter was killed and scalped as he returned to the scene of his family's massacre. The three Carter children were led by their captors into Canada, where Sarah and Elizabeth, with the help of some British officials, were eventually ransomed and returned to Connecticut. However, neither ever recovered from their terrible ordeal. According to historical annals, Sarah was "a stark mad thing until her death," while her sister eventually married, but remained a semi-invalid for the rest of her life. Young Nathaniel, on the other hand, took to the Indian life, becoming a member of the Cherokee tribe, marrying an Indian woman and living with a branch of the Cherokee nation for the remainder of his days. Although Nathaniel never returned to Dudleytown, it was his son, Ta-wah, christened David C. Carter when he attended the Indian Mission School in Cornwall, who later became the editor, jurist and advocate of Indian rights mentioned earlier. Meanwhile, during all the misfortunes of the Nathaniel Carter family, things did not go well back in Dudleytown for another branch of the Carter family. In 1774, just ten years after the Indian massacre in New York State, a horrible but unidentified epidemic struck the Dudleytown household of Nathaniel's brother, Adoniram. Before medical assistance could be obtained, Adoniram Carter, his wife and only child were wiped out. It just went to show, they say, that whether people remained in the village for a brief period or a lifetime, there was no escaping the Dudleytown curse. Through the early years of the nineteenth century, the jinx continued to take its toll in the unfortunate town. An epidemic in 1813 was far worse than the one that struck down the Carters, with fatalities numbering in the scores, including several in the pioneering Jones family. Later, one of Dudleytown's greatest celebrities, Revolutionary War hero Gen. Herman Swift, became half-demented in his old age, especially after one of his several wives was struck and killed by lightning. There are also folks willing to blame the curse of their Dudleytown associations for the political misfortunes of Horace Greeley and Samuel Jones Tilden. They will also make a point of noting that Dudleytown native Mary Cheney Greeley died only a week before her husband was disastrously defeated for the presidency by U. S. Grant, and that Greeley himself died soon afterward. By the end of the nineteenth century there was very little left of Dudleytown for the malevolent curse to work on. Nevertheless, it had a few gasps left. One of the last people to feel its sting was a solitary farmer, an immigrant from Poland, who saw in the abandoned farmland and deteriorating homestead of the former Rogers estate an opportunity to make good in his adopted country. He worked hard at pasturing sheep, but within a few years, they say, he became discouraged, gave up the farm and went elsewhere to seek his fortune. His departure left only one family living in Dudleytown: Patrick Brophy, an Irish laborer, his wife and two sons. They didn't last long, though. The boys were discovered stealing some sleigh robes down in Cornwall and rapidly left the area, just ahead of the law. Their mother worked too hard, ate too little and died of tuberculosis soon after her sons' flight. Finally, in 1901, after his house burned to the foundation, Brophy threw in the towel: he left Dudleytown forever. And then there was none. Well, almost. Although the last resident of Dudleytown came to the deserted and overgrown village only in the summer, his story is in many ways the most bizarre of all. His name was Dr. William C. Clark and he was a prominent physician with a busy practice in New York City and a professorship at a city medical college. One day while he and his wife were scouting Litchfield County for a piece of property on which to build a country retreat, fate brought them to the old ghost town high above Cornwall Bridge. It was love at first sight. Dr. Clark bought a great tract of land hard by Dark Entry Road, cleared a pleasant lot on a shady hillside, laid pipe to an icy, ever-flowing spring at the crest of the hill and built a rustic cabin from the hemlock he had cleared from this land. Although he may have wondered why he was unable to employ any local labor to assist him in constructing his dream hideaway, Dr. Clark enjoyed the hard physical labor -- and never asked questions. Finally, down by the brook at the foot of his hill, he prepared a swimming pool, with banks of thick, green moss and crystal water which he was delighted to share with the gleaming brook trout which swam there. When it was completed and his beautiful wife joined him for a first satisfying splash, the Clarks agreed that this was as close to heaven as either of them was likely to come. Even the owls high in the overarching trees seemed to share their delight. For many summers, as local residents waited for the old Dudleytown jinx to show itself, the Clarks found nothing but peace, rest and happiness at their camp in the woods. Then one day, quite unexpectedly, it happened. Dr. Clark was called back to the city on some medical emergency or another. They say that as he and his wife waited at the station for the train which would take him away, Mrs. Clark clung to him tightly, begging him to return to her at the earliest possible moment. Witnesses reported that as the train pulled out, the doctor's wife stood for a very long time, looking down the track toward the departing train, before slowly moving to return to her lonely "Owlsbury" cottage. Dr. Clark completed his business in New York in short order, returning to Cornwall within thirty-six hours. But when nobody met him at the station, he hurriedly walked to the opening at Dark Entry Road and plunged into the shadowy woods. Except for the hooting of owls, all was quiet as he entered the clearing where his summer cottage stood. No sign of life greeted him as he ran, terrified, across the lawn to the cabin. But as he pushed open the front door, which had been left slightly ajar, he heard a sound that he would never forget. From an upstairs room came the maniacal, uncontrolled laughter of one who had taken leave of her senses. During his absence, his wife had gone quite mad. Some seventy years have passed since Dr. Clark put a padlock on the last inhabited house in Dudleytown and returned to the city. No one today remembers the exact location of the old farmhouses or the graves where so many heroes and victims lie buried. An occasional curiosity-seeker will make his or her way along the overgrown rocks that mark the last vestige of Dark Entry Road, poke around in some cellar holes full of decaying debris, take a few snapshots that somehow never come out, because even at high noon on a sunny day it is too dark in Dudleytown. But the folks who live in the shadow of the ghost town on the hill know that the only thing permanent about the place are specters from the past, the mourning owls, and, of course, the legend of the Dudleytown curse.

   Contact Us   Search   Privacy Policy   Site Map
Curbstone Press content © 2001 Curbstone Press. All rights reserved.     

Curbstone Press is supported in part by: