Dudleytown, Connecticut: The Farming Settlement Behind the Legend

01How Did Dudleytown Begin?

Dudleytown was never incorporated. According to the Cornwall Historical Society, the name was an informal label, given at an unknown date, for the part of Cornwall where several members of the Dudley family lived. Anyone looking for a charter, a town hall or a main street in this corner of Litchfield County will not find one.

The settlement's start is dated to the early 1740s, when Thomas Griffis arrived. Gideon Dudley followed him. By 1753 Barzillai Dudley and Abiel Dudley were there too, and Martin Dudley came a few years later. Other families settled alongside them.

The area was settled in the early 1740s, according to the Historical Society's list of the earliest arrivals, which begins with Thomas Griffis and Gideon Dudley.

02Farming a Hard Hillside in Litchfield County

Settlers cleared forest for pasture and cropland, and families worked the land for generations. Subsistence farming was the base of life in the Dudleytown Litchfield County hills. The Historical Society is blunt about the setting, calling it poor farmland. It describes a high, steep hill with difficult access and a shorter growing season than the nearby valleys had.

Corn, flax, rye and wheat were the crops. As the farms gave less, residents turned to making charcoal for the iron furnaces on Riga Mountain, a trade that fit the era, when the local iron industry was still running.

The site lay among Woodbury Mountain, Dudleytown Hill, Bald Mountain and Coltsfoot Mountain, about two miles southeast of Cornwall Bridge. It was a pocket between ridges, high enough to keep a short growing season.

03What Happened to Dudleytown?

The cause was ordinary. Fertile farmland opened up in the Midwest in the late 19th century, and the local iron industry wound down. Cornwall's population fell. Those who stayed settled near the train stations or the Town Green, away from the hills. The New England Historical Society likewise says residents left because of poor farmland and opportunities in the West.

The numbers tell the story of the decline. Cornwall had more than 2,000 people in 1850 and fewer than 900 a century later. Dudleytown itself was always small: about 35 families in the 1820s, and a total population that "probably never passed 100."

The settlement emptied in the late 19th century. A story circulates that the last permanent residents were a sheep-herding family named Brophy by 1900. The Historical Society notes that the name of this Irish laborer changes from one retelling to the next, so the details belong to legend rather than record. The Connecticut State Register lists Dudleytown in Cornwall among villages with no post office of the same name.

04The Making of a Curse

The supernatural reputation appears to start late. According to the Cornwall Historical Society, the curse legend seems to trace to Edward C. Starr's 1926 History of Cornwall. The Society calls Starr's two-page account "fanciful and inaccurate," and says it has found no accounts of the supernatural in Dudleytown from before that book.

The Historical Society gives a specific example. Starr claimed that the wife of Dr. William Clarke lost her mind and killed herself, and that Clarke then left Cornwall. The Society says Clarke kept living in Cornwall, and that his descendants do too.

Another thread of the legend ties the Dudleys to an English nobleman beheaded centuries earlier. Gary P. Dudley, a Texas resident, researched this for The Legend of Dudleytown: Solving Legends through Genealogical and Historical Research (Heritage Books, 2001). He found no genealogical link to Edmund Dudley. The Historical Society likewise says the Dudleys had no connection to the noblemen beheaded in England.

05Can You Visit Dudleytown Today?

No. The site is private property and closed to the public. The land passed into conservation in the early 20th century. The Dark Entry Forest Association acquired much of the area and planted thousands of trees. One account describes a 750-acre preserve bought in the 1920s.

The closure is more recent. After the 1999 release of The Blair Witch Project, Dark Entry Forest, Inc. put the area off limits, citing drinking parties, campfires, littering and vandalism. According to the New England Historical Society, police arrested eight filmmakers in 2011 who strayed onto private property. That is a single-source account, but it shows the trespassing the owners have been trying to stop.

06What Remains of Dudleytown Today

Abandoned Dudleytown is mostly forest now. The Historical Society and Wikipedia agree that only a few traces survive, chiefly cellar holes where houses once stood. The plantings of the Dark Entry Forest Association finished what the departure of the farmers started, and woodland covers the fields the Dudleys cleared.

The Dudleytown ghost town that visitors imagine, with its empty streets and curse, comes largely from a 1926 book and the retellings that followed. The documented place is quieter. A few families farmed a hard slope in northwest Connecticut for a century or more and then moved on, as thousands of New England hill farmers did. For anyone who wants to learn about it, the Cornwall Historical Society's research is the best place to start.