Wolcott History - The Russell Property

When my parents married in 1946, they bought a house and property in Wolcott.  The property was 23 acres.  I devoted a long chapter in my autobiography to the house with only a few mentions of the property, so I thought I’d write a bit more about the property in this blog entry.

The property was quite irregular in shape, in fact I think that there were actually 12 or 13 sides to it.  However, many of these “sides” were just slight jogs in some of the sides as it bordered other properties.  Let me try to describe it, as I was one of the only people who could (at least at the time) locate the major corners.

On the southern side, it started from a pin located along Seery Rd. and went back for quite a distance, first along the side of Otto’s sawmill then along the back side of all the properties that were along the north side of Barclare Lane.  It jogged just slightly a couple of times, but was more-or-less a straight line.  At the end of Barclare Lane if you walked back beside the last house (it was pretty swampy so you often had to move from hump to hump to avoid stepping in the water), you would find a pin in the ground. 

From there it went in a straight line back through the woods to the north.  The next corner was marked by a small hole drilled in a large rock.  As it was otherwise unmarked, you had to know which of the large oak trees the rock was next to and how to locate this small hole (about pencil-sized in diameter).  It then took a right angle to the left, heading back west again.  The next marker was a metal stake in the middle of a somewhat clear space (at least as clear as one could be in the middle of a forest).  Then there was another right angle back to the north to an old section of wooden fence on a slight rise.

From that corner it went back west again in a long straight line to the back of the property where there were two “taverns” (i.e. bars).  If you continued following that same line along side of the bar property you would come out right where North Street started.  From the back side of the bar property it went back more-or-less south again, following along the backs of the various properties that fronted on Route 69.  There were several more jogs in that section.  Eventually it ran along side of an undeveloped continuation of Seery Road that was a right-of-way behind three homes on Route 69, then back along the paved section of Seery Road that ran in front of our house and back to the starting corner.

The stakes at the back side of other properties were generally easy to find, but the ones marked by a hole in a rock, the middle of a clearing, and the old fence post were not.  I think that my dad and I were the only ones who could locate them at the time.

There were several distinguishing things about the property.  The first was “Russell’s Pond” which was right down the hill behind the house and behind the properties along Barclare Lane.  It was a couple of acres in size, not very deep (perhaps 2-3' at the most).  It was fed by three springs – two along the southern edge and one more out in the middle.  The springs were easily locatable in the winter as the ice over them was the last to freeze.  I don’t recall the springs ever running dry, even in the worst of summer droughts.  There was a small earthen dam at the NW corner where a small stream ran out of the pond (more on that below).  In the early days, about half of the pond was good for ice skating in the winter.  The back part of the pond had rushes and grasses in the middle, although if the water level was high enough in the winter you could skate along the edge of that, through the bushes that grew on humps in the back, and back the other side.  But that was a real obstacle course.  In recent years even the part that used to be open has been taken over by reeds and other plant material.  The bottom is slowly becoming silted in.

Another feature was up the hill on the back side of the pond to what were called “first pine” and “second pine”.  These were very noticeable and because of the quantity of pine needles that they had dropped over the years there was essentially a clearing around their base where you could sit on one of the many rocks that poked up through the ground.  They were the only real landmarks in what was otherwise unbroken forest.

There was a path that wound through the woods, beginning by the pond, going up the hill past the two pines, then through a blueberry glen and coming out about 2/3 of the way up Barclare Lane.  When the house lots were being formed along that street, my father bought a half-lot that would eventually become access to the backside of the property so it could be sold off.  The extension to Catharine Drive on the north side of Barclare now goes up through that half-lot (50’ wide) and then Mideana Court splits off of it.

Going back to the stream coming out of the pond – it ran through a low, swampy area that ran somewhat NNW and eventually wound its way to Cedar Lake (aka Cedar Swamp Pond).  There were abundant swamp cabbage and other swamp-loving plants growing in that depression.  It also made it challenging to follow along the north side of the property as crossing the stream could be a bit treacherous, especially if it was a wetter season.  The stream never had a name, but since it is the only running water that flows into Cedar Lake, one could consider that Russell’s Pond and that stream are the true headwaters of the Mad River, the river that flows out of Cedar Lake and runs the entire length of the town. 

The final feature was an area to the north of the house and along the western border of the property. At one time this had been an area where they had "mined" sand - perhaps used for some construction projects.  A 1934 map of the town shows this quite clearly.  When I was growing up it was still fairly open with a large choke cherry tree in the center.  We had a lot of fun digging in the sand.  In recent years this area has become covered with scrub trees and it's difficult to imagine what it was like back then.

Like most forests in that part of Connecticut, there were lots of rises and dips, occasional outcroppings of rocks, and a variety of hardwoods – maples, oaks, etc. – as well as a few dense growths of Mountain Laurel, some clumps of blueberry bushes, an occasional cedar or pine, etc. 

It was a great place to grow up.  Russell’s Woods and Russell’s Pond were the source of much play by everyone who lived in the neighborhood.  The 23 acres was certainly large enough to get lost if you didn’t know where you were going, and if you wandered off the property to the north or east you were in even larger sections of woods that belongs to others (and which are still there to this day).

The back 15 acres were eventually subdivided and sold off.  About 8 acres, including the pond and the stream flowing out of it, were donated to the Wolcott Land Conservation Trust (and are now officially called the “Russell Preserve”).  The SW corner roughly one acre with the house on it now belong to another family who are raising their son in the same tradition, but alas without all the 23 acres of woodland to roam in.