The meaning of Wononscopomuc
Lake WononscopomucWhat’s In a Name?It’s the sort of thing we do while idling away a pleasant summer day on the shore of a cool, clean lake. While newcomers just try to remember the original name for Lakeville Lake the rest of us might wonder how it got the name “Wononscopomuc” and what was its original meaning?
Some people have just used their imagination. A real estate web site says it’s an Indian word meaning “sparkling water.” That’s helpful copy for a real estate ad, but it has no basis in fact. It was probably taken from an article by Ellen Strong Bartlett in The Connecticut Quarterly of October, November and December 1898. However, Ms Bartlett gives no source for her definition other than to describe Wononscopomuc as a “crystal clear, spring fed lake.”
Even stranger was the definition a writer for a San Bernadino, California, paper gave and he says his family lives here. He wrote, “Lakeville’s Lake Wononscopomuc is ‘Smile of the Great One’ in the local Indian dialect.” There is no truth to that definition either even if his sentiment may be correct. That one apparently comes from a sermon by John Calvin Goddard at the Salisbury Congregational Church on Sunday, August 3, 1930. Rev. Goddard claims he got that definition from J. Hammond Trumbull the noted Connecticut historian. But we can’t find anything like that in Trumbull’s book.
To help track down the real meaning of Wononscopomuc we must refer first to Malcolm Day Rudd who was a diligent local historian in the last part of the 19 century and the early 20th century. In 1886 he wrote of the Indian settlements on the northern and eastern shores of the lake. They were probably part of the Pequot tribe who had fled the advancing white civilization in the 17th century and settled in a place they called Weatogue and we now call Salisbury. In 1725 Major Joseph Talcott put their number at 50 souls and described the village as We-a-taug.
Rudd quotes Dr. Joseph Warren Crossman who came to Salisbury in 1796 and wrote in 1803 that while the Indians of the area seemed to be helpful and friendly the settlers of the early 18th century built a block house or small fort on the northern shore of Lake Wononscopomuc to guard against sudden attack. Dr. Crossman complained the early settlers didn’t think very highly of the Indians and saw little value in anything they had to offer including their language.
Thomas Lamb was an early entrepreneur who came to the area probably from Springfield, Massachusetts, and managed to purchase from the Indians several tracts of land in what is now Salisbury and Sharon for the governor and colony of Connecticut in 1735. The price was listed as “Eighty pounds and divers victuals and clothes.” The first iron ore had been discovered the year before at Ore Hill just west of the lake and the smelter was set up in Lime Rock. Then in 1762 John Hazleton, Ethan Allen and Samuel and Elisha Forbes built a foundry at the end of Wononscopomuc. Hence the community came to be known as Furnace Village and the lake was known as the great pond or the Great Furnace Pond. It wasn’t officially named Wononscopomuc until 1848.
According to James Hammond Trumbull (1821 – 1897) who was not only a Connecticut historian but also a scholar of Indian languages the name we now know as Wononscopomuc appeared in a Salisbury property record of April 1739 as Wonunkapaugcock. Elsewhere it was written as Wononcapawcook, Unkapaukook and Wenunkeapaucook among others. He writes that it became in the 18th century to be called Wononscopom’uc Lake for Furnace Pond and Wononpakook for Long Pond. (or Middle Pond as it was sometimes referred to in early Salisbury records) In other words he says in his book Indian Names of Connecticut originally published in 1881 both words were corrupted from one Indian word.
Trumbull said the prefix “Wonon” probably means land at a bend or turning of the pond. “Paucook” refers to some locality near the pond and means a marshy area.
There are references in the files to an historic address by Judge Samuel Church in 1841 who said that he was told as a youth that it meant “land at the bend or turning point” of the pond. But he could not determine if that meant the area near Sucker Brook or the area west of the Town Grove. Judge Samuel Church (1785 – 1854) was born in Salisbury and rose to become Chief Judge of the Connecticut Supreme Court of Errors.
So it would appear that English usage has corrupted the original Indian words and transposed their meaning. Very likely the origin of the word Wononscopomuc referred to a place near or at the lake where we are told there was a settlement of some kind. If the reference was in use before the dam was built to use the water for a grist mill or later to work the bellows for the ore furnace, it is reasonable to imagine that either the Sucker Brook or Town Grove sites were not only bends in the water but also marshy areas. Even today the area at the west end of the grove and Rudd Property is designated as “wetlands.”
So to make a long story short we could probably be fairly accurate in saying “Wononscopomuc means the marshy area at the bend in the lake.”
Bill Littauer
August 7, 2006
