In his account, the residents of Windham fled naked from their beds with 'worse shrieking than that of the frogs,' fearing an earthquake or 'dissolution of nature.' He relates that the men retreated a half mile and upon their return heard from the 'enemy's camp' voices uttering words 'Wight, Hilderken, Dier, Tete.' They only discovered that their attackers were frogs after three men were sent to negotiate. He states that the frogs 'filled a road forty yards wide for four miles in length,' entered Windham around midnight, and were several hours in their passage. In his version the frogs were located some five miles from Windham in 'an artificial pond three miles square.' Peters writes that the frogs, having found the water dried up, hopped their way towards the Willimantic River. Reverend Samuel Peters, then a student at Yale University, wrote an account of the incident in the 1787 History of Connecticut. In his introduction, Weaver offers his own interpretation of the events. It was published by James Walden in Willimantic. In 1857, William Lawton Weaver compiled the 48-page booklet The Battle of the frogs, at Windham, 1758: with various accounts and three of the most popular ballads on the subject. The Windham 'Bull-Frog Song' with introduction The pond, formerly known as Follett's Pond, was renamed Frog Pond. The event has become memorialized as a part of the town's folklore. The people of Windham were ridiculed in the colonies, and the town seal was made to be a bullfrog. He wrote that 'Long and obstinately was the contest, and many thousands of combatants were found dead on both sides of the ditch the next morning.' John Warner Barber wrote in the 1836 book Connecticut Historic Collections that the incident had occurred in July 1758. Apparently, one could not go very far from home and hear something about bullfrogs. People throughout the colonies heard the story and many were amused. Hundreds of dead and dying bullfrogs lay in the last remaining parts of the pond.Ĭolonel Eliphalet Dyer and Colonel Jedediah Elderkin were both Yale graduates and lawyers who had set up offices in Windham. In the morning, the colonists found the cause of the noise. Those who were armed mounted a hill to see the landscape around them. Other sources say that the people thought they were Native Americans saying 'gin' and 'rum.' Townsfolk ran into the streets, some with guns and knives. Some sources claim that the names 'Dyer' and 'Elderkin' were heard, the names of two influential lawyers and colonels. Numerous people became convinced that Armageddon was upon them. The resulting noise was so great that the townspeople thought that it was the attack already happening. One night, in June, the frogs began to attack each other over the last remaining water. An attack from French and native forces was also expected from Canada. In 1754, Windham was experiencing a severe drought and the French and Indian War had recently broken out. The gruesome battle was actually a large-scale die-off of frogs in a millpond known as Frog Pond. JSTOR ( September 2018) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message).Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.įind sources: 'Battle of the Frogs' – news Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources in this section. This section needs additional citations for verification.

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