14 . WILLIAM T. BRIGHAM 



The region around East Haddara on the Connecticut River, a few miles below 

 Middletown, has been the scene of a series of local disturbances which have been 

 noticed since the country was settled, and are referred to by Indian tradition and their 

 name of the place, 3Iorehemoodiis, or place of noises.^ The first shock of which the time 

 is recorded was on Ifcnj 16, 1791, at eight o'clock in the morning, when it began by two 

 very heavy shocks in quick succession. The first was more violent. Stone walls were 

 shaken down, chimneys were untopped, latched doors thrown open, and a fissure in the 

 ground several rods long supposed to be then opened as it was discovered soon after. 

 Thirty lighter shocks succeeded in a short time, and more than a hundred were counted 

 during the night. At Killingworth, twenty miles distant, " a Captain Benedict who was 

 walking the deck of his vessel, then lying in the harbor of that place, observed the fish to 

 leap out of water in every direction as far as his eye could reach." The atmosphere was 

 clear, and the very bright moon almost full. On the night of the seventeenth, six more 

 shocks were felt. The weather continued clear and warm.^ 



3Iay 18, 1791, about ten o'clock, P.M., a shock was felt from Boston to New York. 

 A few minutes after came another lesser shock, perceptible at a distance of seventy miles 

 from East Haddam.^ There the tremor of the earth and the noise in the atmosphere 

 were great. Chimneys and stone fences were thrown down. During the night there was 

 a succession of local shocks to the number of twenty or thirty. Stones of several tons 

 weight were removed from their places, clefts opened in the soil and in the rocks. In 

 Middle Haddam the shock was quite severe, and the direction seemed to be nearly from 

 west to east. It is probable that the earthquake felt at Philadelphia and New York at the 

 same hour, was identical, and not on the sixteenth as reported.* 



In December, an earthquake was felt at St. Paul's Bay, on the St. Lawrence, in Canada, 

 about sixty miles northeast of Quebec. Walls were cracked and stones fell from the 

 houses.^ 



August 28, 1792, another earthquake was felt at East Haddam. The forenoon 

 was rainy with an easterly wind which changed in the afternoon to southwesterly. 

 Warm and somewhat squally. Shock at ten o'clock in the evening.^ October 24, at one 

 o'clock in the morning three shocks were felt. The weather was very pleasant. 



January 11, 1793, at eight o'clock in the morning, another shock of the East 

 Haddam series. Weather warm and pleasant. July 6, another at six o'clock in 

 the morning. Weather very warm and damp ; rain, with thunder, in the afternoon. 



March 6, 1794, at two o'clock in the afternoon, there were two, and another at 

 eleven in the evening. Atmosphere clear in the morning, but damp and hazy in 



' In a letter from Roger Williams to John Winthrop, dated (4th ser.) vol. IV, p. 229. Perhaps these traditions referred 



at Providence, probably June 1638, after referring to the to earthquakes from this same eastern Connecticut centre, 



earthquake of that year, the writer continues : " The - Silliinan's Journal, vol. xxxix, p. 338. 



younger natiues are ignorant of the like: but the ellder in- ^ Trumbull's History of Connecticut, vol. ii,p. 02. 



forme me that this is the 5th within these 4 score yeare, in * Ilamljurg Corresp. nr. 128; Moniteur, 23 Aout 1791, 



the land: the first about 3 score & 10 yeare since: the second according to Mallet. 



some 3 score & 4 yeare since, the third some 54 yeare since, ^ Tr.ansactions Royal Geological Society (London), 2d 



the 4th some 46 since: & they allvvayes observed either vol. v, p. 97, note to Baddeley's Memoir. 



plague, or pox, or some other epidemicall disease followed; « Silliman's Journal, loc. cit. Mallet confounds this with 



3, 4, or 5 yeare after the Eartlujuake (or Naunaumemoauke) the next. 

 as they speake." Massachusetts Historical Collections, 



