Miriam Blatchley was born on March 1, 1652, in Branford, a settlement barely a decade old, carved from forest and stone on the edge of the Long Island Sound. The town, like much of the New Haven Colony, was rigidly Puritan—founded by dissenters from the Massachusetts Bay Colony who wanted not only freedom of religion but purity of it. Miriam’s parents, Thomas Blatchley and Susanna Ball, were among the first wave of settlers who had come seeking that holy rigor.