In my tenacious quest to defy the onslaught of age, I often bicycle throughout southeastern Connecticut. Sometimes I head to Connecticut College for a therapeutic rendezvous with youth.

However, in order to reach such enlightenment, I must travel the spookily named Gallows Lane off Bloomingdale Road in Waterford. Gallows Lane has an aura, due either to its name, its ghostly emptiness, or my imagination. The clicking of my bicycle’s drive train, normally dim, suddenly seems intrusively loud in the strange stillness.

I’ve pedaled it many times, sensing the eery chill of a dark past, fighting the urge to change gears and flee. I unavoidably consider the origin of its name every time.

After an autumn encounter, hinting of spooks and Halloween, curiosity finally got the better of me. I did some homework and learned enough to change my gloomy perspective of the road.

The history of Gallows Lane has been told before, but renditions often lack the proper context of the day.

But first, the facts. Sarah Bramble was a New London servant girl who bore an illegitimate child in April 1752, whereupon, perhaps fearing the social ramifications of the day, if not some other dark emotion, she strangled the poor thing to death. Her crime was discovered, and she was jailed until her trial in September.

The jury deliberated indecisively, and Bramble remained imprisoned for another year, until the ironically hung jury finally reached a guilty verdict in October 1753. Bramble was sentenced to hang.

Frances Caulkins, in “History of New London 1860,” noted: “The fearful machine was erected in the highest part of the road and all the hills and ledges around must have been covered with spectators.” Some 10,000 people traveled up to 30 miles to watch “the grisly act,” and on Nov. 21, 1753, Sarah Bramble was hanged for murder on Gallows Lane, in what is now Waterford, securing the road its name.

Bramble’s hanging is usually described as a somber affair, as one would imagine an execution. But I can’t help but wonder if the event was more like a circus.

Two factors may well have made its namesake activity anything but a somber occasion: New London’s reputation for bad behavior and the carnival atmosphere that often accompanied Connecticut hangings in colonial times.

New London at the time, according to Caulkins, was known as a somewhat messy place. State funding for fortifications was often withheld because, as Caulkins noted, “the town was not, perhaps, a favorite in the colony.” Its residents were considered a “boisterous and contentious” lot, a people who often “voted wrong,” displaying “manners that were too free,” actions that were “too impulsive,” and its residents were known to “harbor foreigners.”

Caulkins delicately stated the town “had less of the Puritan stamp than any other place in Connecticut.”

Being a true New Londoner, Bramble herself exhibited some of these same characteristics. Obviously impulsive with her affections, she was also contentious, as she refused to hear the sermon preached on her behalf by the Rev. Mr. Jewett just prior to her execution.

The Connecticut Humanities’ website notes that public executions were often spectacles with huge crowds and local merchants selling souvenirs and alcohol. Hangings “often turned into raucous affairs” with onlookers “turning on each other in drunken brawls.”

Bramble’s hanging may well have turned into a rowdy party, reminiscent of New London’s rougher days. I’ll keep that thought to brighten future two-wheeled, mindful meanderings through the haunting quiet of Gallows Lane.

John Steward lives in Waterford. He can be reached at tossinglines@gmail.com.