WHOSIWHATSIS LIVED NEAR THE HOOSIC-WHISICK POND

 ((First posted in Nov.2011 ))

My ancestor Ralph Houghton was one the original settlers of Lancaster Ma.
But the town was abandoned after the destruction of the town in 1675/6 in
the colonial Indian Wars.Ralph and the other townsfolk retreated back to
the coast by Boston until it was once more safe to go back to Lancaster.
But while he and some of his children did return, Ralph himself  eventually
ended his days on a farm in the safer location of Milton Ma. 

Ralph's land sits near the Blue Hills and among it's features was a spring
fed pond that the local Indian's called the Hoosic-Whisck. While the
Indian name was still occasionally used as late as the early 1900's, over
time the pond became known simply as Houghton's Pond.. Today the
pond and the land Ralph Houghton once farmed are part of the Blue
Hills Reservation where among other things copperhead and timber
rattlesnakes roam in sight of the skyscrapers of Boston.

Milton is right next to the Dorchester and Mattapan sections of Boston
and when we were kids our parents occasionally took us to Houghton's
Pond for a swim during the summer(although not as often as we went to
Houghs Neck in Quincy). It amazed me when I started researching the
family tree to find out we had went swimming in a place named after
someone we were related to and we never had a clue!