Yes, it is sort of interesting to think that our ancestors may have been kicking around Norwich, Connecticut, together back in the late 1600s. The city features something called the Norwich Founders Monument, a rather large structure with a plaque on each of its four sides featuring the names of the founders of the city, the 38 original settlers. It was built after the town's first death, that of Mrs. Post, brought attention to the need for a town cemetery. My ancestors' names are on Side 2. My family is descended from Hugh Calkins and his oldest son John Calkins, who was born before they left Wales and probably crossed the ocean as a child. John married Sarah Royce and they had eight children. Families were huge back in those days. Many of these surnames are to this day extremely common in America as we are all related, sort of:
Side 1: Major John Mason, Rev.
James Fitch, John
Pease, John Tracy, John Baldwin, Jonathan Royce, John Post, Thomas
Bingham,
Thomas Waterman, Robert Allen.
Side 2: Ensign Wm Backus,
Francis Griswold, Nehemiah
Smith, Thomas Howard, John Calkins, Hugh Calkins, Richard Egerton,
Thomas
Post, John Gager.
Side 3: Thomas Leffingwell,
Richard Wallis, Thomas
Adgate, John Olmstead, Stephen Backus, Thomas Bliss, John Reynolds,
Josiah Reed,
Christopher Huntington.
Side 4: Thomas Tracy, Samuel
Hyde, William Hyde,
Morgan Bowers, Robert Wade, John Birchard, Simon Huntington, Stephen
Gifford,
John Bradford.
