Origin of the Name “Potanoc”
As written by Thomas H Raddall in 1964
The content on this page has been compiled by Linda Rafuse
__________________
The northern part of the village of Milton, where the upper bridge crosses the rapids of the Mersey River, has been called “Potanoc” from a very early time, (Variously spelled Potanuck, Potanack, Potannock, etc.)
Simeon Perkins first refers to the site as follows:
June 19, 1780: “I go to the Falls with Capt. William Freeman and Mr. Torrey to see the place they have pitched upon for a sawmill. It is a mile above the old mills. The place appears to answer for a mill but difficulties will arise in getting their hay to the spot and getting the boards rafter down. There is a very good land there. Mr. Torrey has fenced and planted a small spot of ground which looks better than any land I have seen in the town. He says there is four or five acres of such. The growth is chiefly beach, the soil black and a little sand intermixed and is near two feet deep.”
August 9, 1780: “Capt. Freeman and Mr. Torrey raise their sawmill. It is one mile above the other mills. I was present and had good entertainment. The raising went on very well.”
March 8, 1786: “Mr. McAlpine, rafting some boards from Potanuck Mill, had near about half of his raft of boards and shingles go over the dam and many lost.”
The above entry seems to be the first in which Perkins gives the name Potanuck to the fertile spot “a mile above the old mills,” i.e., the original mills built on the Mersey falls at the tip of tidewater.
A settler named Elijah Minard, who lived in various places in the vicinity of Liverpool (Herring Cove, Liverpool, Birch Point, and The Falls) rented a small farm owned by Perkins at Birch Point, which was on the west bank of the river roughly half way between Liverpool and The Falls. This was on March 18, 1776. By 1789 he was living above the Falls, probably at Potanoc.
On July 23, 1805, Perkins notes: - “Mrs. Perkins and myself ride to the Falls. I walked to my Potanuck Farm I had from Elijah Minard where George Hunt lives now. The house roofs with bark, and put in some new sills, and some glass in the window.”
This farm must have been on the west side of the river, where there is a flat area of good soil beside the present (1964) Potanoc bridge. Probably the first sawmill was on the same side of the river. The easterly side was steep and rocky. There appears to have been no road from the lower falls (now called Milton) to Potanoc until 1798, when a horse path was cut through the woods from tidewater (The Falls) across the province to Nictaux in the Annapolis Valley. This road passed up the east side of the river.
On April 12, 1800, Perkins writes: - “I ride to the Falls, and ride up the Nictaux road as far as opposite to Potanuck Mill.”
For a long time, it was assumed by descendants of these early settlers that the name Potanoc (or “Potanuck” etc.) was of Micmac origin. However, there is nothing in the Micmac language to give a meaning to it. It has been confused with the Micmac word “Ponhook” and its several variations “Panuke”, Banook” etc. to be found in various parts of Nova Scotia. This word, so frequently used by the Micmac in their geography, meant “The First Lake on the Stream”. The first lake on the Mersey River was 15 miles above “Potanoc”.
Perkins gives a good clue in his diary for July 9 and 11, 1800, in which he says that: - “Capt. Whipple of Norwich drinks tea at my house. He used to live at Pacquatannock”.
Modern maps of Connecticut show the name as “Poquetanuck”, a village beside a creek on the east side of the Thames River, formerly known as East Norwich.
Perkins, a native of Norwich or that vicinity, obviously knew “Poquetanuck” well. It seems most likely that after acquiring the farm “one mile above the old mills,” he gave the place on the Mersey River this name. The highly variable spelling is typical of his diary and indeed of all correspondence in that time.
