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It is Mark's story, but it is our story. It is the story about the very beginnings of what was to become the United States. It is the history before recorded history in the New World. So much was lost in the hardship of settling a new land. Or was it?

We moved to Oxford, Massachusetts when I was three and one of three kids. There would be seven more children born to the Hopkins Clan of Oxford. Dad's parents grew up in Upper State New York and I think our New World roots probably originated on the Mayflower of Plymouth Massachusetts and the Hopkins who had sailed with her from England. I do not know if this is true or not, but, every Thanksgiving I say it is, while retelling the tale of the First Thanksgiving.

The Pilgrims' colony in Plymouth was the first in Massachusetts. It was the Pilgrims who sat down with the Native Americans and gave thanks for having established the first colony to survive in the New World. This was the first Thanksgiving. The Pilgrims would soon be jointed by others who would continue the Thanksgiving tradition.

When the French Huguenots fled religious persecution to England, they got on a boat and sailed to New England. There they moved into the Wilderness of what would become Central Massachusetts. The graphic to the right is a rendition of what the original settlement probably looked like.

The Huguenots were driven back to the Pilgrim's Bay Colony by the Native Americans who thought of this same area as home to themselves and their ancestors. The fort had been built on a high hill. When we were kids, Mom would take us up to Huguenot Hill where there was a memorial to the first to try to settle the Oxford area. Mom would have us pick Concord grapes, first planted by the Huguenots. She would then make the most incredible jelly.

Mark and his twin brother Mike were nine and helping Mom pick grapes on the hill, when they found the remains of a belt buckle. The Twins decided they had an archeological treasure and went to talk to the man who owned the hill. He followed the boys back to the area they had made their discovery, in amongst the stone ruins of the original fort, ruins the owner of the hill had never seen.

As they approached the hill, they could hear the sound of a heavy tractor. It was the owner's neighbor, in the very process of taking away the stones of the old fort, for his own purposes. A rather loud argument ensued between the two adults. The stone stealing neighbor blamed the boys and scared them, to the point that the Twins never would visit the fort again, as children.

Years go by, and about the time Mark had his picture taken with Ben and Samantha, he rented the aluminum building at the edge of the Oxford Airport. The one runway was used by small plane pilots. It was on a hill opposite Huguenot Hill. It was known as Federal Hill. At the far end of the runway was Mark's new machine shop. There was nothing around but forest and the runway and, at its other end, a couple other aluminum buildings and the few planes.

Mark enjoyed taking the kids up there for a day of fun. One day, they came upon a very large pile of rocks, averaging about four inches long. Mark knew the rock pile was manmade and had some purpose. Upon looking closely, he realized the rocks had been burnt. They looked around and realized, there was two other piles of burnt rocks.

To the left is a picture showing two blackened rocks and what the unburned rocks in the area look like.

A closer look reveals the blackened rocks appear much more brittle than their counterparts. The large black rock was the one Mark picked up, upon his first encounter with the strange piles of rocks. It is actually only half the rock. It broke in his hands, it was so brittle.

One day while alone in the machine shop, Mark heard the sound of a bull dozer. He immediately realized the rock piles were in danger. It took a few minutes before Mark's dirt bike had him up to where the rocks were about to be bulldozed. Mark's memory put him back on Huguenot Hill when he was nine. Then, one man's target had been rocks of the fort's foundation. Now, another was again attacking rocks, this time a pile of burnt rocks, Mark had come to believe were used in the cremation of the original Native Americans.

Another shouting match transpired. Two men on a hill, one on a bulldozer and the other on a dirt bike, positioned in front of the bulldozer's intended target. As the angry driver turned the bulldozer away, threatening to return, Mark wondered about his own state of mind.

What, he wondered, had possessed him. Had he lost his mind. Fighting for a pile of rocks that he did not own, was not rational. "I need a sign," he shouted. He looked to see the back of the bull dozer. The logo of its maker was an Indian head. "Not good enough," Mark shouted. Something made him look down. Under his foot was an airless balloon. He reached down and picked it up, unraveling it, to see the image of Pocahontas. The balloon had been a promotional gimmick to advertise Disney's current movie. "Good enough," Mark said.

It is safe to say, that from that moment on, Mark was obsessed with finding the truth about the rocks and the hill they were on. The picture to the left, shows the Town of Oxford in the background. It is the way someone standing at the top of Federal Hill would have viewed the early town. There were no forests. The land had been farm land to the Indians.

Now, this concept that the Indians were farmers is not popular. We had been taught they were hunters and pretty nasty people. But, Mark on his dirt bike had traveled all through the now forested areas and had found stone wall fencing delineating separate fields. Even before the rocks came into the story, Mark believed the Indians were into agriculture supplemented by hunting.

In searching for the truth, Mark eventually found a one-of-a-kind book concerning the Bay Path. In the early colonies, roads got their names based upon where they led. In the beginning, all roads led back to the Bay Colony in Plymouth and Boston areas. The great Bay Path was traced by the book's author from its source on the east coast of Massachusetts to the outskirts of Oxford. South of Oxford, the Bay Path was again identified, under the new name of Charlton Avenue. Mark had waited six months before the library system let him look at it. The author's last name was the same as Mark's, "Hopkins". The book had been written in the 1800's.

Mark took up the quest for the Bay Path in Oxford. He copied a picture of the author standing alongside a road, in front of a wooden building identified as the Federal Fort. Mark noticed a rock in the picture. He knew where that rock was. He went to the same place the picture had been taken.

As he stood engrossed in orienting himself from the picture to the land, a man came out of the nearby farmhouse. "What ya doing?" the old man asked.

Mark tried to summarize the story as to why he was where he was. Suddenly, Mark saw that the man was crying. Not knowing what he had said to provoke this response, Mark started apologizing. Then the man said, "No, please, these are tears of great joy. That picture of the house, the Federal Fort, is something I have been searching for during the last 50 years of my 80. That was the house I was born in."

Mark gave the old man the picture, and the old man gave Mark pieces of the puzzle. His parents had built a new house next to the old wooden family home. They started to tear it down when they found the gun portals in the walls which had bee covered over. Realizing the stories of the house having been a fort were true, the parents partitioned the Oxford Town Fathers to stop double taxing them for the two structures, one of which was of historical relevance. The town elders refused, and in anger and sadness, the parents burned the old fort to the ground that very night.

The old man and Mark continued searching together. They discovered that "Federal Hill" had originally been called "Long Hill" as it was known by the Indians. This name supported Mark's belief that the last trip an individual made was to the top of that hill. "Don't you think, it would be a very long hill emotionally if you were taking your loved one's body to the place of cremation? Just carrying a body up the tallest hill in the area would make it a long hill," Mark said to me.

In native cultures, the land has significance. The tallest hill is often the most sacred because it brings a human being closer to the Great Spirit. One day Mark climbed the highest tree on Federal Hill, to see what the view would be if there were no trees. He could see each surrounding New England state and the Atlantic Ocean. Long Hill was likely the highest hill in south-central New England. At its top, the piles of rocks were laid, upon which the dead would be consumed in fire. Their ashes would wash out of the rocks, down the long hill, to fertilize the valley that would one day be Oxford.

Mark has continued his search for the truth about the beginnings of Oxford and those that had been there first. He also traced the point where the Bay Path was lost by the 1800's Hopkins to where it connected with Charlton Ave. It seems the Bay Path got lost during the development of the town center. He identified a piece of land which was probably where the Bay Path had traversed. It was identified as "Lot 13". Mark found the oldest survey map of the area and was pleased to see Lot 13 designated. He then found a modern map and overlaid the two. I can only imagine what he felt when he realized that the very house he and I and all the other Oxford Hopkins had grown up, was built on Lot 13.

For those of you who may just have grown up in Oxford, Massachusetts, you may want to see what is happening with the Oxford Free Public Library. And, for those who would like a chance to be a part of history, regardless of where you grew up, they are expanding the library and need help in funding. Just click on the picture of this old library.

Thanks for your participation.

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