Barkhamsted Lighthouse

SOMETIME AROUND 1740, give or take a few years, there lived in the town of Wethers-field a full-blooded Narragansett Indian who went by theunlikely name of James Chaugham (probably pro- nounced "Shawm" or "Shawn"). Born on far-away Block Island, the young man had somehow found his way to Connecti- cut's second oldest community, adopted the ways of his white neighbors and, through hard work and a pleasing personality, established himself quite well in their regard. If he fancied the English-sounding name "Chaugham," they said, why not let him use it?
During this same period, there was growing up in a proper Wethersfield family a young woman named Molly Barber. Like some teenagers from time immemorial, Molly provided her family with almost more headstrong personality than they could handle, particularly when it came to men in her life. One day she announced that she was planning to marry a young man whom she knew her father was not too fond of. As she expected, Mr. Barber denied his daughter permission to marry the man of her choice, whereupon Molly threw an old-fashioned temper tantrum. Among other things, she vowed that if she could not wed her current boyfriend, she would henceforth marry the next fellow who asked for her hand, no matter what kind of person he was or -- and she knew this would get to her father -- what his racial origins might be.
Well, since Molly promptly began broadcasting her availability around town, it didn't take long for the word to reach the ears of young James Chaugham. One thing led to another, as they say, and before Mr. Barber could do anything about it, Molly and James were united, privately and secretly, in holy matrimony. Then, maybe to avoid her father's wrath or ostracism by a disapproving community, or perhaps just to find privacy for their new life together, the newlyweds left Wethersfield and headed north into the howling Connecticut wilderness, up around the Massachusetts border.
Some say that they first moved in with some Indians who lived in a little cabin on top of one of the hills above what is now the Barkhamsted Reservoir. But it is more likely that they picked out a homesite on the side of Ragged Mountain, overlooking the West Branch of the Farmington River, about two miles south of Riverton, in an area which today is part of the Peoples State Forest. In this remote country, with not another permanent neighbor within miles, the Chaughams cleared a plot of land and built themselves a log cabin. It was said to be the first home in the town of Barkhamsted. In this place, the Wethersfield emigrants raised eight children, six of whom grew up, married and continued to live nearby their parents' house, in what became a veritable village of Chaughams.
From the beginning, they say, the original log dwelling served as a welcome landmark for the occasional travelers passing along the desolate north-south trail which followed the West Branch of the Farmington. Not only did the house have a number of windows, but it was also not very tightly chinked; so the cooking and heating fires burning day and night, winter and summer, glowed so brightly through the various openings that passers-by began to refer to the lonely cabin as the "Barkhamsted Lighthouse."
In later years, when the Hartford-Albany turnpike was built along the Farmington River, it passed directly below the Chaugham cabin. With the increased interstate traffic, the fame of the Lighthouse spread, because drivers on the stages making their way south over the toll road would always watch anxiously for the light streaming through the walls of the Chaugham cabin, and when they finally saw it, they would shout to the passengers, "There's Barkhamsted Lighthouse; only five miles more to New Hartford the end of the route."
Apparently Molly and James got on well with folks in their region, even though their nearest neighbors were probably down in New Hartford. In fact, they say that James Chaugham would always light a signal fire on the top of Ragged Mountain, up behind his cabin, whenever he learned that the New Hartford settlement was under threat of Indian attack. Then the New Hartford residents would gather in the fortified house they had built to protect themselves from the occasional sorties by hostile Indians out of Satan's Kingdom, and wait for the Indians to appear or the danger to pass. The people of New Hartford had great affection for the keepers of the Barkhamsted Lighthouse.
Sad to say, the reputation of the Lighthouse as a welcoming or warning beacon in the northern Connecticut darkness failed to survive after the death of Molly Chaugham -- known and loved in her last years as "Old Granny" Chaugham -- at the age of 105, in 1820. While the descendants of James and Molly lived on for several generations in and around the Barkhamsted Lighthouse, the "Lighthouse Tribe," as they were called, turned out to be a wild, rough and roistering clan, with an appetite for booze, brawling and burglary. One tradition even suggests that local folk believed that the Chaugham posterity had somehow mysteriously disappeared and that the Lighthouse had been taken over by a bunch of robbers who committed numerous acts of violence in the region. When the alleged robber gang later disappeared as well, rumors spread that ghosts of the Chaughams had returned to avenge themselves on those who had turned the Lighthouse site to such evil purposes. One dark and moonless night, so the story went, the spirits killed and scalped every one of the wicked bandit band.
More than likely, however, the Lighthouse Tribe and the legendary criminal gang were one and the same. An 1854 article on the Lighthouse colony gave a vivid account of the depths finally reached by descendants of the romantic Wethersfield refugees. Four or five shelters still remained, reported the Mountain County Herald, "built after an architecture about halfway between a wood pile and a rail fence." The inhabitants, the report went on to say, "have a look of utter desolation and destitution. Around this place are about twenty-five half-clad human beings of every possible race, from that of the African to the Anglo-Saxon and Indian. All during the year, winter and summer, some of these may be seen peddling baskets and brooms and receiving food and clothes in return." Another nineteenth century commentator added: "Some of the Chaugham posterity have become civilized enough to try the old game of wrestling with a whiskey bottle, and with the same result -- to get thrown -- and they are not the only natives of this town who have seemed to try to see how poorly and meanly they could live, and had great success follow their efforts."
Obviously, the chances for long-time survival of the Lighthouse Tribe were pretty dim, and, to the relief of everyone and the surprise of no one in Barkhamsted, the last vestiges of the Chaugham presence had completely disappeared by the 1920s. So ended the luminous legend of the interracial lovers which had begun nearly two hundred years before in Wethersfield.

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

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