Europeans began to settle the region in 1715 after John Marsh came from Hartford to what was known as the Greenwoods, the thickly forested part of the colony that corresponded roughly to today's Litchfield County. Having explored and found friendly inhabitants, Marsh and a partner, John Buell of Lebanon, Connecticut, petitioned the General Assembly for the right to establish a town at "a place called Bantam" – the name possibly a corruption of the Algonquian word "Peantum", the Potatuck group who lived in the area.