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1728 Bridge Raising Tragedy
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The pamphlet shown on the left states:
Forty men were working on building a bridge over the Shetucket River (about 3 miles north of Norwich), when a 100-foot section collapsed, dropping most of them 20 feet (and one man 40 feet) amid falling timbers to the rocky shallows below. Many were injured, and two died: Jonathan Gale of Canterbury (who was just 19, whose father had recently died as well), and Daniel Tracy (who was 76, and only there to see the work being done as one of the founders of the project–he just happened to be on the bridge at the time). This copy belonged to Tracy’s son, Winslow Tracy (1689-1768).
The following is a quote from Info Source 2:
In 1728 at the rebuilding of Lathrop’s bridge on the Shetucket, connecting Newent and Norwich, which had been destroyed in the freshet of 1727, a part of the frame-work gave way, and one hundred feet of the bridge, and forty men were precipitated into the water. The water was low, and they were thrown upon the rocks, and among those most seriously injured, was Mr. Daniel Tracy, who died the following day.
The pamphlet, giving an account of the accident, says that “Mr. Tracy was not a person concerned in the affair, only as he was a benefactor to it, and went out that day to carry the people some provision, and happened to be on the bridge at that juncture of danger : a man that had always been noted for an uncommon care to keep himself and others out of probable danger, and yet now himself insensibly falls into a fatal one.
And very remarkable is it, that to keep his son at home this day, and so out of danger by that occasion, he chooseth to go himself” (of his meare good pleasure, we suppose), “on the fore-named errand, and is taken in the snare which he thought more probable to his son.” This son was then a married man, forty years of age; and Daniel Tracy was seventy-six. His foot-stone in the cemetery reads : “This worthy in a good old age died by a fall from a bridge.”
Acknowledgements
“Mill Brook Bridge,” National Register of Historic Places, OMB No. 1024-0018
“Many Survived 1728 Shetucket River Bridge Disaster” (12/27/1989), Hartford Courant, by Diana Ross McCain
The complete list of sources may be found by clicking the “Bibliography” button, and, then typing “1728 bridge” in the SEARCH box.
What is a FresheT ??
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The annual breaking up of the ice in the rivers is so often attended with a destructive overflow of the waters, that it is usually contemplated prospectively with some degree of apprehension. When the rains come, and the ice begins to crack, mills and bridges perchance may be swept away, meadow lands devastated, fences destroyed, and serious losses sustained. Some parts of the town are peculiarly exposed to such ravages. The narrow and winding outlet of the Shetucket, and the high banks that restrain it on the south, naturally tend to throw the accumulated swell of the river over the flat part of Chelsea.
09/04/1720:
02/28/1729:
01/16/1737:
Spring 1757:
01/08/1784
February: 1788
June 1789:
01/29/1797:
September 1815:
March 1823:
March 1835:
02/08/1854:
04/30/1854:
02/09/1857:
Acknowledgements
Caulkins – page 352
Caulkins – page 352
The complete list of sources may be found by clicking the “Bibliography” button, and, then typing “freshet” in the SEARCH box.
Great Fire of 1793
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Acknowledgements
Wikipedia
Railway & Locomotive Historical Society
The complete list of sources may be found by clicking the “Bibliography” button, and, then typing “1793 fire” in the SEARCH box.
1823 Flood
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Acknowledgements
Caulkins – page 552
Railway & Locomotive Historical Society
The complete list of sources may be found by clicking the “Bibliography” button, and, then typing “1823 flood” in the SEARCH box.