If you were a 2nd grader in Westport between 1959 and the early 1970s, you remember the Jennings Trail field trip.
Bessie Jennings (Courtesy of Greens Farms Living magazine)
Bessie Jennings — a native Westporter who traced her ancestry here to the 1650s — conceived, developed and led the tour after retiring as a history, government and civics teacher at Roger Ludlowe High School.
It included the Beachside Avenue site of the 5 founding Bankside Farmers; the Machamux boulder; the old Greens Farms Church meeting house; the Compo Cove tide mill; the Minute Man monument, and the Compo cannons, among many others.
She told stories about the Sherwood triplets, the tar rock signals sent when the British landed, and much more.
After Bessie Jennings died in 1972, the Westport Young Women’s Woman’s League worked with the Westport Historical Society to create 23 markers, at historic sites throughout town.
Of course, it was called the Jennings Trail.
One of the plaques on the Jennings Trail marks the Elmstead Lane home where Bessie Jennings was born, and died. (Photo courtesy of Greens Farms Living magazine)
(Hat tip to Bob Weingarten, Westport Historical Society house historian, who published a longer version of this information in Greens Farms Living magazine.)
