Pequot Path: Difference between revisions

The '''Pequot Path''' ran about 69 miles (111 kilometers) near the mainland ocean shore from Providence to Westerly, Rhode Island, and then on to New London (formerly Pequitt),<ref>William Davis Miller, ''Ancient Paths to Pequot'' (Providence: E.L. Freeman, 1936), 8. [http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015070269447;view=1up;seq=7 Hathi Trust Digital Library edition].</ref> Connecticut. At least one authority asserts the route also included the island community of Newport on Rhode Island.<ref>[http://qb.mindhenge.org/PostRoad.html On the Trail of Benjamin Franklin: The Lower Boston Post Road] (accessed 20 October 2014).</ref> All seem to agree it was certainly extended into central Connecticut, but the earliest name of the trail in Connecticut beyond New London is unclear (before it was called the Boston Post Road). The Pequot Path route was part of the American Indian foot trails that were widened by European colonists into horse paths, and then wagon roads<ref>Frederic J. Wood, ''The Turnpikes of New England and the Evolution of the Same Through England, Virginia, and Maryland'' (Boston: Marshall Jones, 1919), 25. [https://archive.org/details/turnpikesofnewen00woodrich Internet Archive version online].</ref>  

Starting as a horse path in the 1670s, the "Post Road" was a chain of shorter roads strung together end-to-end to form the '''lower fork of the [[Boston Post Road]]''' (Boston-New York) with connecting legs from Boston to Providence ([[Old Roebuck Road]]) to New London (Pequot Path) to New Haven, Connecticut to New York City. The long route from Boston to New York to Charleston, South Carolina was also known as the [[King's Highway]] from the 1750s to about 1780.

No list is known to exist of migrating colonists who used the Pequot Path and decided to settle along it. However, the earliest settlers in the area would have used this road, or the ocean to reach their new home. The Pequot Path would have attracted nearby settlers because it helped them reach markets for buying and selling goods and services. Therefore, the land, tax records, and histories of the earliest settlers along the route would list the names of people likely to have used the Pequot Path.