Wolcott Remembrance

My friend and distant cousin, Robert Perry, writes very elegantly. Since I’m an engineer by training, my writing style tends to be much more terse than his. But perhaps I make up for the lack of elegance and eloquence by the volume of writing I do for my blog where I often write genealogy stories or ones of Wolcott history.

Robert’s most recent posting was about the impact that Wolcott had on his life – although that name only appeared as the last word of the thousand or so that he wrote. But his words were an inspiration to me as well as to many others who have responded to his posting. Thus, here is my own feeble attempt to capture some of the remembrances that I have of that wonderful place where I spent so many enjoyable hours of my youth.

My parents had moved to Wolcott when they got married, although there were many connections to the town in their ancestry – especially on my mother’s side. I came into the world less than two years later, the first of what would be five children born into that family. With only one car, and that used by my father to commute to work in Waterbury (a long seven miles away), that meant that my life was only the small part of the town in my immediate neighborhood. But it was a lively neighborhood, with my uncle and aunt just three houses away with their equally large family of eventually five children. There were also a few other families around, but for the first few years my cousin Dave was the one closest in age to me and so the two of us were often found together wandering through the woods behind our house. Later on, as school began, I had other friends in the north end of town and my wanderings went to other streets and my horizons continued to expand. Those were carefree days, when our feet were the primary means of locomotion and as long as we were home before dark or when meals were being served, we had the freedom to roam, to learn from our environment, to make mistakes – which led to further learnings, and to participate in our own small way in the life of the town.

We were raised somewhat collectively by the many mothers of the families around us – and by the fathers as well after they had returned from their commute to their jobs either to Waterbury or to Bristol or to other small towns around us. If a small group of us was in a particular yard, then we were sure to be noticed by the parents of the houses nearby and could expect intervention if it was ever needed – which was not too often. It didn’t matter if our friends and their parents were well established New England families or recent immigrants, or whether they had a firm grasp of English or it was a second language to them – we were all residents of the same small town, with similar reasons for living there, and with shared values as a result. The homes and yards that were off limits or where we were soundly scolded if were trespassed were not that many and we always quickly learned about them after a new family moved into that house.

Later as I added a bicycle as my preferred mode of transportation, my horizons expanded to the entire town and I was able to travel to the homes of my growing circle of school friends. I didn’t know all the homes in town, and I didn’t know which homes/yards were off limits, so I had to confine myself to the streets or the places of people I knew. And the town was growing, with new streets or homes being added on an accelerating basis. That meant that I always had new things to discover, but a little of the closeness of those early years was beginning to fade.

In high school I then became acquainted with everyone my age in the entire town and my circle of friends greatly expanded. There were over 150 of us, and while that number is much smaller than the class size has become in the decades since, for someone whose class at Alcott was only a few dozen, it was a wonderful experience to begin to share life lessons with all these new friends. The years we spent together at WHS were meaningful to all of us. We had new classmates every year as the town continued to grow – but not too many departures as the benefits of small town living in that wonderful place called Wolcott were so attractive to so many families.

After graduation, I left town for the Midwest as my chosen course for further education was in Michigan. But my legal address was still in Wolcott for the next few years and my parents continued living there until their eventual departure from this world many decades later. My childhood home was sold a few years ago after my mother’s passing and a new family is now living there. The same is true for the homes of other relatives who lived in Wolcott. But I still have one cousin there, living just a stones’ throw from where I grew up and he keeps me abreast of the goings on in town.

But it’s interesting how much influence those growing up years had on me. I knew those 150 or so classmates at WHS for four years and am still in touch with many of them over 50 years later – in contrast, I spent five years in college with several thousand others and am only in contact with a single individual from among them, and he because he was the best man at my wedding. Similarly, I have written a number of stories about Wolcott history but even though I have now lived in the same house in Pennsylvania for over 40 years I have not written any stories about my current town. And although I am on the mailing list for the Wolcott Historical Society, I have no interest in joining the parallel organization for my current town – even though it meets just a few miles from where I have lived for several decades.

It’s definitely not a matter of convenience or a length of time living in one place that makes the most impact. I think it’s a combination of other factors. One is that it was our childhood home and our relationship to the greater world around us and the amount of growing and learning that was taking place was so critical to our development at that young age. Another is that the life we had in Wolcott was rather idyllic and we continue to long for those simpler times. But a third may be the kind of people that lived there and the collective experience that we all had growing up in that place. That shared experience still continues to resonate in our souls today and draws our minds back to both the place and the people that are part of that experience.

I would not trade my time in Wolcott for anything. Although my parents have both passed on and my siblings and I have scattered both across this country and around the globe, our hearts still call that place “home”. And I’m pleased that my parents chose to give a large piece of the woodlands where I grew up as a perpetual undeveloped area to be enjoyed by future generations as well. So while we as a family are gone, our family name will live on in the Russell Preserve that is now owned by the Wolcott Land Conservation Trust (https://www.wolcottlandct.org/preserves/ and https://www.wolcottlandct.org/preserves/russell-preserve-2/).

Thanks Wolcott – we remember you fondly!