The Old Killingly Hill Church

This area of Putnam was once part of Killingly Hill, the site of an early settlement and anchored by the old circa 1818 First Society church, northeast at the Aspinock crossroad. The church, although not active for many years, continues to be maintained and is a local landmark. Flanked by maples and pines, this quintessential New England scene is photographed particularly in autumn, and frequently visitors with their cameras are crouched in our narrow front yard, trying to capture every bit of pristine beauty. We've witnessed marriages on the granite slab steps of the church and know that this place calls those who know it and has for hundreds of years.

The history of the old church is entwined with every colonial inhabitant in this village, every home, every headstone in the Putnam Heights cemetery. I purchased a history of the church including a transcription of its birth, marriage and death records. There I found most of the inhabitants of this house, at some milestone of life or death. I learned that the roots of the church began in a crude meeting house at the highest point on Killingly Hill. A more formal church was built in the 1700s at the northern end of the common, but later was moved to its present location. Periodically perusing eBay, I have acquired two photographs of the church, but at different periods -- the steeple was altered after a hurricane in the early 1800s.

The blacksmith's daughters told us that this house was built the same year as the church, although there aren't any records that verify this. My theory is that the original "front cape", which is just a center chimney two room structure, with a fireplace in each room, was a hostel of sorts for colonists who may have had to travel some distance in all manner of weather to attend church.

Visible from every east-facing window, the old church is a favorite muse. At sunset, the steeple and weathervane are illuminated pink or gold, depending on the western sky. The moon rises over its hulking silence, and then the sun climbs over the hill behind it as day breaks. There is an unmistakable ebb and flow of hours and days, of generations gone and those to come, the continuation of humankind.

Mulberry and mill towns

Our old house is well known in our parts. A blacksmith, and his wife, lived in the house for over 50 years before us. They were quite self-sufficient: the wife had a large garden, and canned until she couldn't anymore. On the small acreage, there was a horse, a few milking cows, pigs up in the back field, and a chicken coop. A wood stove heated the "front cape" and a coal burning cook stove heated the kitchen ell. There was no central heat until the couple was into their nineties, and the wife, during a stint in a local nursing home, said she wouldn't return home until there was a modern furnace. So, in 1995, an oil-burning furnace and hot air ducts were installed. But still, after the wife died, the old blacksmith reverted to his old rituals of wood burning -- collecting, cutting and stacking downed branches and trees, much to his daughters' dismay.

So everyone knew the old man. For at least three years after we bought the house, people would stop by, admiring our restoration efforts, and inquiring about the previous owner. We told them that his health had failed, he had gone to the nursing home down the road, and that is when he sold the place, but that he had come back for a visit not long before he died. His daughters brought him, so he could see the house again, and the barn rehab. And he seemed pleased with what we had done.

Our old house is perched at the crossroads at the old Killingly Hill church, precipitously close to the roads to the north and east. Our protection from wayward plow trucks and speeding teenagers is a tree, a very large tree, in the tiny front yard. It towers over the house. We had just begun some major structural work in the summer months after buying the place when one of the contractors asked about the big tree. He had noticed that the branches had leaves that didn't look at all alike, and that fruit was falling from it, staining the roof, and the road. Some research quickly revealed that our main defense from the road was a mulberry tree. Another mulberry tree grows in the center of the back field, but the trees don't look alike, although their fruit does.

Was the mulberry tree planted hundreds of years before, evidence of an effort of early settlers to start a silk industry? Or, perhaps, more likely, it is a native upstart, allowed to grow and flourish for the same reason we appreciate it: a natural barrier from the unnatural. Several years ago, a local historian provided me with a photograph of our home around 1930. The mulberry tree was only about ten feet tall.