Wicked Litchfield County

by Peter C. Vermilyea

Overview

Thieves, rumrunners and rapscallions all color the unsavory side of Litchfield County history. Townspeople accused women of witchcraft simply for not bearing enough children in the early days of the region. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Owen Sullivan and William Stuart took advantage of the county's isolated stretches and a currency shortage to build counterfeiting empires. In 1780, Barnett Davenport's brutal actions earned him infamy as the nation's first mass murderer. Small-time speakeasies slowly took hold, and the omnipresence of alcohol-fueled crime led to the birth of the nationwide prohibition movement. Local historian Peter C. Vermilyea explores these and other devilish tales from the seedier history of Litchfield County.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781625857361
Publisher:	The History Press
Publication date:	07/18/2016
Series:	Wicked
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	144
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Peter C. Vermilyea teaches history at Housatonic Valley Regional High School in Falls Village, Connecticut, and at Western Connecticut State University. A graduate of Gettysburg College, he is the director of the student scholarship program at his alma mater's Civil War Institute. He is the author of Hidden History of Litchfield County (The History Press, 2014), recipient of the 2015 CultureMax Award and he maintains the Hidden in Plain Sight blog (www.hiddeninplainsightblog.com).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements 9

Introduction 11

1 Litchfield County's Witches 15

2 Counterfeiting 27

3 Gallows Lane: Crime and Punishment in Litchfield County 47

4 Temperance and Intemperance 69

5 Slavery in Litchfield County 85

6 Military Malfeasance 99

7 Ministerial Misadventures 117

Epilogue 129

Works Consulted 133

About the Author 139