Woodstock

WOODSTOCK Near this place, in 1636, Thomas Hooker and his party may have passed by way of the Connecticut Path, going to settle what is now Hartford. In 1674 John Eliot, Apostle to the Indians, Pastor of the First Church in Roxbury, Massachusetts Bay Colony, and Major Daniel Gookin visited a peaceful encampment of Wabbaquassets living in the vicinity of present-day Woodstock and sought to preach from nearby Eliot Rock, and sought to establish their church among the natives of these lands. King Philip's War broke out in 1675, during which the Wabbaquassets deserted the area. The site was chosen as a place of settlement, and here on April 5, 1686, from Roxbury came Peter Aspinwall John Gore Thomas Bacon Benjamin Griggs Henry Bowen George Griggs Matthew Davis John Marcy John Frizzel Ebenezer Morris Nathaniel Gary Benjamin Sabin Jonathan Smithers known as the Thirteen Goers to found the Town of New Roxbury, the first European settlement in the area that became Windham County. (Continued on other side) WOODSTOCK (Continued from other side) Given the name "Woodstock" by Judge Samuel Sewall in 1690 "...because of its nearness to Oxford, for the sake of Queen Elizabeth...," the Town remained a part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony until 1749, when it seceded in favor of becoming a part of the Connecticut Colony. From these hills went Captain, later General, Samuel McClellan following the alarums sounded from Lexington and Concord in 1775, together with 184 men, who responded in a greater number than from any other town in the Colony. Born here were Jedediah Morse, the "father of American geography," and Henry C. Bowen, founder of the INDEPENDENT, a pre-Civil War anti-slavery newspaper; builder of Roseland Cottage; benefactor of Woodstock Academy, founded in 1801; and donor of Roseland Park. The many small rural industries of 19th century Woodstock are now represented by the making of electrical components and plastics in a community mainly agricultural and residential.