General Notes

The following description from Folktales of Pomfret described for me what it must have been like as a colonial pioneer in the wilds of Connecticut and has helped to make Sarah Horrell Goodell one of my favorite ancestors:

In the autumn of 1698, Sarah Horrel Goodell left the friendly village of Woodstock, following the Path alone, far out into the wilds of the Nipmuck wilderness, seeking the cabin that she had been told by friends her husband was making ready for her. He had left for the new country in the early spring. Receiving no tidings of him, she resolved to join him, so taking her spinning wheel, she traversed the lonely trail from Roxbury, Mass., depending upon chance "lifts" from fellow travelers along the way.

She could not be prevailed upon to remain overnight at Woodstock but, spinning wheel in hand, she hurried on through the forest gloom. South of Woodstock lay the Mashamoquet in the Nipmuck Country, the future town of Pomfret. At this period the only settler in the Purchase was John Sabin, near the Woodstock line, the Bartholomew place. The path that Sarah Horrel Goodell trod that autumn night, two hundred and fifty years ago, led over Ragged Hill in the western section, miles from the Sabin home. She traveled the rocky trail, ragged and steep, down through the valleys, over the brooks and on for many a weary mile, until at last, as the last rays faded in the west, she came to the little clearing and there, by the side of the "way", she found her cabin home.