April 2009 - The Legend Of Old Fifty Crooks

April 2009
I had recently gotten a copy of a new book that detailed some aspects of New Milford history that hadn't been written about before and was finding it interesting since I love history and especially when it is local history that I can feel more closely connected to. The book focused on the northern boundrys of New Milford and how there were laid out and surveyed in the mid 1700's. I know, it sounds a bit dry but between all the technical stuff was a lot of information about the people of the time period and how they lived and worked. There was one mention in the book that really struck a chord with me though. The survey team who was sent to make the northern boundry of New Milford were making their way from west to east across very rugged terrain making large piles of stones at predetermined intervals when they had to climb a mountain in what is known as the Merryall section of town. This mountain is known as "Rock Cobble". But the interesting notation that they made was that they came upon a stone house built on the side of the Rock Cobble mountain. Understand that this land was not privately owned at this time so whoever had built this house had done so without purchasing the land it was on! A colonial era squatter if you will. To make matters even more enticing it was said that a Dr Warner lived in this house and was known by a peculiar knickname, "Old Fifty Crooks". Hmmmm, an eccentric person hiding on land he didn't own who had a knickname that suggested he might have been a criminal. This had the making to be a really good treasure hunt!
I immediately started to wonder whether any traces of this old house could still be found. I looked at some maps and the area was still wooded and remarkabley remote. There is a swamp at the base of the mountain which hinders access from the most direct approach. Private land and very steep rocky terrain blocked other entry points. I kept driving around this area wondering just how the heck I was going to get in there. I realized that the only way I could get on that mountain was to approach it from the back side. This meant that I had to climb up very steep terrain and go over the peak and about halfway down the other side to the most likey area that house could have been erected.
There were a few puzzling aspects of this story that just didn't make sense to me. The most glaring of which is why a squatter would go through the trouble to build a house made of stone on land that he didn't own? That would be a huge undertaking only to have the possibility of having to leave if it was discovered he was there. It didn't seem very likely dispite how remote this area actually is and was. My guess was this: I think that the story had gotten changed over the years from people telling their own version of it just like when kids play the telephone game and each one changes the message just enough so that in the end the message is nothing like it started as. I think this house was just a wooden house, probably just a simple log cabin and because it was on Rock Cobble Mountain the story was changed to a rock house by someone who misunderstood or misheard whomever told it to them. That makes sense to me.
So one day I go off in search of the Rock Cobble house by hiking up the backside of the mountain. It's very steep but the terrain isn't too bad.

I notice some flat areas that had been dug out of the side of the mountain a very long time ago and it took me a few seconds to realize what these were. These were the bases of very old charcoal mounds. The hills of CT were thick with forest back in the colonial days but they were immediately harvested for their wood to make charcoal because the iron industry was booming in nearby towns. The wood was stacked and a smoldering fire was started inside that produced the charcoal and this of course had to be done on site where the wood was harvested...on the side of the mountain.
So I headed further up the mountain finally reaching the top with my lungs burning and my legs feeling like jello. There was a big stone wall on the top that immediately caught my eye. The land had been cleared at some point for fields. I started down the other side while asking myself where I would build a house. It wouldn't have been on the peak because it would have been exposed to the wind coming from the west. It would have been sheltered by the mountain down on the east side if possible. There didn't appear to be much level ground to build on but I walked toward the most level area I could find.

I could see water flowing out from the side of the mountain in the form of a small spring and thought to myself that the house would have been close to this. Water is essential and houses are always built near a water source so this spring would have been a prime factor in choosing where to build a house back in the 1700's. As I came upon the mouth of the spring I could see that some small stones had been placed around the spot where it flowed from the hilside. This raised my hopes of finding the house because here was proof that someone had once used this spring as a water source. I looked for a dry area that was level enough for a house and this led me to a spot about 100 feet away that looked promising.

At first I saw what I thought was a pile of dead trees that had fallen on top of each other but as I looked more closely I could see it was more than that. There were a few logs left from a log cabin that were cut and notched together to form the corner of this very old cabin. I could see the faint outline of the rest of the cabin too where all the logs had rotted away but left a slight hump from the debris deposited when the were completely decomposed. This was exciting! Could this be the Rock Cobble House? Could any trace of a log cabin really have survived that long in the elements? It was hard to say, I don't think it is impossible but it was probably very unlikey. There was only one way to find out. I had to use the metal detector in hopes of recovering something that I could attribute a date to. After about a hour of detecting, I was convinced that this wasn't the home of Old Fifty Crooks after all. I was finding late 19th century artifacts and nothing that I could have been made earlier. It was probably a mid to late 1800's hunting cabin and nothing more. The only notable find was a single penny that I found about 200 yards from the old cabin from the 1820's that was at the base of a large domed rock.. Exciting, but not proof of an earlier homestead like I had hoped. It was probably lost by a hunter who had been sitting on the rock when it fell out of his pocket.

So the legend of Old Fifty Crooks lives on. I may make another hike into the area at some point to check a few other places but I don't expect to find anything. If there ever was a rock house on that mountain it must have been completely disassembled with the stones ending up being used for stonewalls.