The place-names of Porters Rock (Old Mystic) and Portersville (drawbridge Mystic) are of unknown origin save that the latter dates at least to 1654.

However, in England a porter is a gatekeeper (portyl = opening), to an estate. In turn, Englishmen of the 1630s would have regarded what today are Groton and Ledyard as the estate of the Pequots.

The Pequot trail, today a paved auto road, arrived at what is now Old Mystic via a switch backing descent of the west-facing slope of Quoketaug Hill. It would have been perfectly in view from the former high point of the subsequently quarried back ledges by sentries atop "the porters' rock."

The village, now drawbridge Mystic, would have been "those porter's village."

Subsequent English settlers continued using these phrases, shortening them to Porters Rocks and Portersville, respectively, making them the region's oldest English language phrases-to-names still in use to this day; almost as old as Shakespeare.

Warren Wenk Jr.

Canandaigua, N.Y.