The Witch of Blackbird Pond (19 page)

AUTHOR'S NOTE

The story of Kit Tyler is entirely fictitious. The house in which the Wood family lived, and all the adventures which took place there, existed only in imagination, but old houses much like it can still be seen in Wethersfield, one of the first settlements of the Connecticut Colony. The Great Meadows still stretch quietly along the river, and a relic of an old warehouse marks the once thriving river port. A few real people walk through the imaginary story. Sir Edmond Andros, the royal governor, Captain Samuel Talcott, the magistrate, Eleazer Kimberley, the schoolmaster, and Reverend Gersholm Bulkeley, the ardent royalist, were important men of their time, and the freemen's struggle to preserve their charter is known to every schoolchild in Connecticut.