The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
The long-forgotten Davenport stone
After years of searching in the woods and weeds along the Quinnipiac River, two old friends with an insatiable curiosity about history finally found the Rev. John Davenport “mystery stone.”
Anthony Griego, one of the two searchers, told me the saga can be summed up this way: “Two senior citizens embark on an Indiana Jones adventure.”
Our story begins several years ago at the Waucoma Yacht Club, not far from the long-hidden stone. Griego, now 75, a retired New Haven police sergeant, and his pal, Charlie Salerno, now 88 and known for his playing with Charlie Salerno’s Clam Diggers Dixie Band, both belong to the yacht club. They were sitting together when Salerno told Griego what he had encountered about 25 years earlier.
“Charlie told me about a mysterious stone he had seen with another friend of his, Tom Hall,” Griego said. “The stone had been pointed out to Tom many years before that by someone whose name has long been forgotten.”
Griego was skeptical. “I blew him off for about a year. I know the history of John Davenport (the cofounder of New Haven, with Theophilus Eaton). Why would John Davenport’s name be on a stone in the middle of a swamp in the Quinnipiac Meadows?”
Griego noted, “Charlie kept pestering me: ‘Let’s go look for the stone!’”
Then one day Salerno showed Griego the photo he had taken of that stone on the day Hall (who has since died) took him to see it. Griego looked at the stone’s inscription, clearly visible in Salerno’s photo: “SOUTH BNDRY FARM c1638” and below that “Rev. John DAVENPORT.”
Suddenly, Griego was interested. His love of history had kicked in. He had to find that stone.
Griego, who keeps meticulous notes of everything, said he and Salerno set out in search of the stone on April 17, 2015. They went to the area where Salerno thought he had seen it all those years ago. They spent about an hour and a half looking in the woods. They couldn’t find it.
“I came home loaded with ticks,” Griego said. “We raked, we dug. There must be 100 boulders in those woods and fields. How do you find it?”
They made several other attempts but still nothing.
Meanwhile, Griego and Salerno were making research trips, starting with the New Haven Colony Historical Society (now the New Haven Museum). The librarian showed them a book of New Haven colonial records and a reference to Davenport’s “farme.”
Their next stop was the Hagaman Memorial Library in East Haven, because that area along the Quinnipiac River once was part of East Haven. Checking some old maps, they learned that when Davenport came to what would become New Haven in 1638, he secured a piece of land near downtown — but in 1640 he was granted 600 acres along what we now designate as the Quinnipiac Avenue side of the river.
“Davenport hired Marke Pierce to survey that land in 1646,” Griego said. “Pierce drew a map. Davenport never lived there. He hired Alling Ball to farm the land.”
During another trip to that library in East Haven, Griego found a book which revealed that in 1724 Davenport’s greatgrandson, Deodate Davenport, hired another surveyer, William Thomson, to re-survey the farm. Griego found Thomson’s surveyor’s map from 1724 at the New Haven Colony Historical Society, with the help of librarian Jim Campbell.
“It clearly shows the location on Davenport’s farm of a ‘dowl stone’ as the southwest boundary marker,” Griego noted.
In a detailed written report of his research and his quest to find the Davenport stone, Griego wrote: “My best educated guess would be that Marke Pierce in 1646 marked that stone by chiseling the information on it.”
But still Griego and Salerno hadn’t found the stone. In 2016 Griego contacted Justin Elicker, executive director of the New Haven Land Trust, because the Trust owns the Quinnipiac Meadows Nature Preserve, which is open to the public. Griego told Elicker about his search for the stone. (Elicker told me he had looked into it but couldn’t come up with any information.)
And then on July 17 of last year, Griego was eating at a City Point restaurant when he spotted Elicker at a nearby table. Griego reminded Elicker of his stone quest and Elicker, who had lost Griego’s phone number, pulled out his cell phone and showed him a photo that had been sent to him. There was the stone, next to the corner of a
condominium and a deck.
As soon as Griego left the restaurant, he called Salerno, told him about the photo and said it included clues that would almost certainly lead them to the stone.
“Charlie was as excited as I was,” Griego recalled. “I picked him up and we went out to look again.”
“We roamed around,” Griego said. “It took about a half-hour but we finally found the stone. We had to clear the heavy brush to locate it, but it was there.”
I asked Griego how it felt to at last find that historic stone.” “It was a relief,” he said. “Such a relief!”
Griego concluded his six-page report, “The Rev. John Davenport Mystery Stone,” written last year: “When one sits on the deck of the Waucoma Yacht Club and looks across the Quinnipiac River, the stone has been there for 371 years, quietly resting in the wetlands.”
Griego emphasizes the stone is on private property belonging to the condominium complex’s owner and is protected by a state statute prohibiting “unlawful
destruction, disturbance or removal of a surveyor’s marker or monument.”
When Griego and Salerno took me out to see the stone last Tuesday, we first checked in with Pat Finelli, who lives in the condo adjacent to that historic marker. “I think it’s a wonderful thing,” Finelli told us. “They should do something to highlight it and preserve it.”
Salerno agreed. “It should be covered, or there should be some kind of iron fence around it.”
As we were walking down to the stone, Griego said, “There’s not much left in New Haven that has any connection to John Davenport.” He noted Davenport eventually moved to Boston and died there.
When we came upon the stone, we stared down at it for a few moments. Then Salerno began digging away at the edges and the inscription with a stick, trying to make it clearer for the New Haven Register photographer. Griego warned Salerno not to damage it.
“When Tom Hall showed this to me, I flipped!” Salerno recalled.
But Salerno said when he called the New Haven Colony Historical Society at that time about 30 years ago to tell them about the discovery of the Davenport stone, the man who answered the phone
told him, “We’re not interested in that type of article.”
“I was stunned,” Salerno told me. “I got so disappointed. I was brokenhearted!”
When I called Margaret Anne Tockarshewsky, the executive director at the New Haven Museum, she noted Griego’s research there and how he had been assisted by the librarians. “We’re glad he found the stone,” she said.
As for Salerno’s report of his disappointing phone call, she said, “It’s unfortunate if people in the past didn’t appreciate or understand what he was trying to do. I can’t speak for them or our institution of 30 years ago.”
I found out through Elicker that the person who provided the photo of the stone to him was Chris Ozyck, a landscaper who lives on Quinnipiac Avenue. Ozyck told me that one day about 20 years ago, while he was doing some “weed whacking” on the condominium property, “I uncovered the stone and saw the writing. I thought, ‘Oh, that’s cool.’”
Ozyck sent the photo to Elicker after hearing he was trying to find that long-missing “mystery stone.”