Excerpt from The History of Redding, Connecticut: From Its First Settlement to the Present Time, With Notes on the Adams, Banks, Barlow, Bartlett, Bartram, Bates, Beach, Benedict, Betts, Burr, Burritt, Chatfield, Couch, Darling, Fairchild, Foster, Gold, Gorham, Gray, Griffin, Hall, Hawley, Heron, Hill, H A history of Redding has been long contemplated by the author as a service due his native town, and as long shrunk from because of the labor, the expense, and the difficulty of its compilation. Whether well or illy done, it is now completed, and goes out to the somewhat limited public for whom it was written. The materials for the work have been drawn largely from the ancient records of the town and parish, from the records of the colony, and from the files of musty papers in the State Library at Hartford. Tradition and oral information have not been neglected, and every reasonable effort has been made to render the work as far as possible a thorough and reliable history of the town. That errors and discrepancies will be found, is to be expected; but it is not believed that they are sufficiently numerous or important to destroy its historical value. In the preparation of the book the compiler has aimed to preserve the character of a local historian, and has confined himself chiefly to the narration of local facts and incidents. In harmony with this principle, an extended biography of Joel Barlow: at first intended for this work, has been excluded. The sketch of the poet so grew on the author's hands, that it was found it would make a volume by itself, and contained so much of general interest and detail that it could not be made to harmonize with the local character of this work. A con cise sketch of the poet's life, however, and the original portrait from Ful ton's oil-painting, that formed the frontispiece of the Columbiad, are ia cluded in its pages. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.