LOOKING BACKWARD
was called Sodom; and, lastly, the section lying west of the Derby to Milford road was called George's Cellar Hill. Despite much investigation, the origin of the name Race is still unknown. One tradition is that farmers living in Milford, and owning land up through Bethany, were accustomed to go to their land in companies and on horseback. Some of the younger men were believed to have tried out their horses that way. But the fact that many of the deeds which describe land as located ''at the Race'' refer to tracts located a considerable distance from the road, indicates that the origin of the name Race (or Homes Race, or Holmes, his Race, as it was promiscuously called) has no definite explanation.
In the writings of Silas J. Peck of Woodbridge, the following item is found: "Seventeen years before the settlement was made in New Haven (about 1620), the Dutch took formal possession of all the land from New York, or New Amsterdam, as they called it, and set up a trading post and fort at or near Milford. Holmes is a distinctly Dutch name, and I believe that some seafaring men of that nationality sailed up the shore to Milford, probably on a voyage of discovery. If they landed, as they must have done, they saw that the land was good, and decided they would acquire a portion of it for themselves. I can plainly see them asking the Captain for shore leave. The consent was finally given, on the condition that all who went were to travel as far north as they could go in a given time, and the one that went the farthest was to have all the land he covered. Holmes must have had the greater advantage, and when he had made the allotted time, he found himself at that place a good half mile beyond what is now the Bethany line, at a natural fortification, a pile of rocks that had the appearance of a fort. It is in fact a place where one man could hold off an indefinite number of enemies, and. since the dim past has been known as Holmes, his fort."
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