Norwich & Stonington, CT

One of the strongest, most tightly interconnected clusters in the whole tree. These families didn't just live in the same towns — they founded them together and repeatedly intermarried across generations.

Stonington founders (co-founded together, 1650s)

• 🟢 Thomas Minor (1608–1690) — diarist, town clerk figure
• 🟢 Walter Palmer (1585–1661) — Minor's father-in-law
• (William Chesebrough, Thomas Stanton — co-founders, NOT ancestors)

Norwich founders (1660, purchased from the Mohegan)

• 🟢 Thomas Tracy
• 🟢 Thomas Leffingwell — jointly with Tracy, relieved sachem Uncas during a 1645 siege; both granted 400 acres by Uncas
• 🟢 William Hyde
• 🟢 Thomas Bliss
• 🟢 Thomas Sluman — m. Sarah Bliss (Thomas Bliss's daughter)
• (Backus, Fitch, Griswold, Huntington, Mason, Waterman — other real Norwich founders checked and confirmed NOT ancestors)

Saybrook/Hartford

• 🟢 Stephen Post — Hartford founder (name on Founders' Monument), later Saybrook proprietor; jointly assigned with Tracy to build Saybrook's fort (1650). m. Hester Hyde.

Notable collateral descendants of this cluster

See notable-connections.md for: Chancellor Reuben Hyde Walworth, Senator Uriah Tracy, David Bushnell, William Chester Minor, historian Frances Manwaring Caulkins.

Family tree shape

Thomas Minor ═══ Grace Palmer (dau. of Walter Palmer)
        │
   (Minor descendants)
        │
Thomas Bliss ─── dau. Sarah Bliss ═══ Thomas Sluman

The Abell family (Robert Abell, Rehoboth MA) connects in too: his widow Joanna later remarried William Hyde as his second wife.