Ezra Stiles in his memoir of 1789 described the discovery in Kent of a curious rock inscribed with curious figures including what looked to be letter combinations EI and BH. The letters might be modern, “The rest however is not of English Fabrick, but a sculpture I believe of very high & remote antiquity.” Indians then living nearby said they knew nothing of the rock. Moravian missionaries had lived at Scaticook, west of Kent, from 1750 to 1770. The first notice of the rock apparently was in 1760, according to Edmund Burke Delabarre (who located it in 1927), when “an old woman shewed to a selected few a paper giving an account that a a Rock with writing on it near this place, they should find Mony buried.”

Stiles said the scratchings, which he traced, were made “by Pecking with an iron took, not by chiszel or engraving.”

Stiles said the rock was at Cobble Hill, which by one topographic map is “east of the river at the mouth of Thayer Brook, west of Leonard Pond, and next north of Spooner Hill, of which it is now considered apart. The tradition of a rock inscribed with mysterious characters still survives in Kent. It is now known as the Molly Fisher Rock.”

Edward J. Lenik, who located the rock near Spooner Hill in 1976, concluded it was the same as Molly Fisher Rock. “The rock is a metasedimentary (sandstone) boulder that measures 13 feet, 6

inches long by 10 feet wide and averages 5 feet in height. About 1 foot down from its top is a vein of quartz 3 to 4 inches in thickness that completely encircles the bounder. The symbols were cut or incised with a metal took, not pecked as stated by stiles, on the vertical northeast face of the rock above the quartz vein.

“The symbols form a linear pattern and the incised lines or grooves measured 3/8 to 5/8 inch in width and range din depth from 3/32 to 5/16 inch. There seem to be nine or 10 distinct symbols or clusters of symbols and a long horizontal line, which gave it the appearance of some type of writing…” Were these marks, as Stiles surmised, of Phoenician origin? Or as Coy concluded, irregular, weathered natural cracks or veins.

— Bernard A. Drew