Saturday 7th. Left Tafts before Sunrise, and passing through Douglas wood breakfasted at one Jacobs in Thompson 12 Miles’ distant—not a good House.1 Bated the Horses in Pomfret at Colo. Grosveners,2 distant 11 Miles from Jacobs and Lodged at Squire Perkins in Ashford3 (called 10 Miles, but must be 12). The first Stage with a small exception is intolerable bad Road, & a poor and uncultivated Country covered chiefly with woods—the largest of Which is called Douglass, at the foot of which on the East side is a large Pond. Jacobs’s, is in the State of Connecticut, and here the Lands are better, and more highly improved. From hence to Pomfret there is some woods & indifferent Land, but in General it is tolerably good and the Farms look well. In and abt. Pomfret they are fine, and from thence to Ashford not bad; but very hilly and much mixed with Rock Stone. Knowing that General Putnam lived in the Township of Pomfret, I had hopes of seeing him and it was one of my inducements for coming this Road; but on enquiry in the Town I found that he lived 5 Miles out of my road, and that without deranging my plan & delaying my journey, I could not do it.4
1. This tavern, just off the main road between Hartford and Boston, was kept by John Jacobs (, 2:863).
2. Thomas Grosvenor (1744–1825), a Pomfret, Conn., attorney, had graduated from Yale in 1765 and practiced law until 1775 when he joined the 3d Connecticut Regiment as a second lieutenant. He ended the war as lieutenant colonel commandant of the 1st Connecticut Regiment.
3. This tavern was kept by Isaac Perkins (, 1:65, 2:792).
4. Israel Putnam (1718–1790), one of the most colorful of Revolutionary War generals, was born in Salem Village (Danvers), Mass., but moved to Brooklyn, Conn., as a young man. Putnam served in the French and Indian War. In 1775 he was appointed major general in the Continental Army where he was an active and popular but controversial soldier, his habit of independent action proving an irritant to GW on more than one occasion. A paralytic stroke in 1779 had forced his retirement to his Connecticut home. Putnam’s farm, which he had purchased from Gov. Jonathan Belcher, was about a mile from present-day Pomfret, Conn. In 1767 after his marriage to Deborah Lothrop Avery Gardiner, he moved to her home in present-day Brooklyn where the Putnams operated a tavern which became a favorite meeting place for Patriots. After Putnam moved to Brooklyn, his farm was occupied by Israel Putnam, Jr., but the elder Putnam had purchased the adjoining farm and it is likely he was living here, rather than in his Brooklyn house, when GW visited the area in 1789 (, 2:834).