I’m planning to take a long walk. This is at least partly to enter into a literal quest to match the figurative quest that is trying to figure out my life. I made a fairly arbitrary choice to start my trek in Norwich, Connecticut, and to go to Orwell, Vermont, because that traces the journey a family ancestor took. Once I started looking at my family history, though, I realized that it makes a ton of sense for me to start in Norwich. I made a cursory review of ancestors who were founders of the town of Norwich, and have come up with 9 out of 35. That’s one quarter of all the founders, and there may be more, because I didn’t research the female side and all these notable men had wives, who had to come from somewhere. And there were other generations of men and women, not just the founders, who lived in Norwich as well.

And that’s probably at least part of why we had that illustration that haunted my childhood. Our last family representative left Norwich in 1902, and the great grandparents died I think in the 1920s or 30s, effectively ending the relationship with the city. My mother had great affection for her grandparents though and Norwich was always, for her, a scene of great childhood happiness, even after she was able to remember little else. 

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So I’m thinking that perhaps I’ll start my walk at Yantic Falls, as the psychic center of this quest. East & West Town Street seem to be where the home lots were for those early settlers, but from Googlemaps it looks like that’s now a state highway and even if the houses remain, there’s not going to be much of the spirit that remains. Nonetheless, maybe I’ll start there and go to the Falls. Or maybe vice versa.