Wolcott History – Farmingbury Part 1 – The Bound Line

As anyone familiar with the history of Wolcott knows, Wolcott was incorporated in 1796 and it took the name Wolcott from the then Lieutenant Governor of Connecticut, Oliver Wolcott, who cast the deciding vote in favor of the incorporation.  Before then it was known as Farmingbury as it was partly in Farmington and partly in Waterbury.

The boundaries of those two other places were not as we know them today.  Farmington extended many miles farther south and west than it does today and Waterbury extended farther north.  Farmington was incorporated in 1645 and Waterbury in 1686. The following is taken from the history of Southington (http://www.southington.org/content/17218/).

Although Southington was formally established as a town separate from Farmington in 1779, its roots go back to a much earlier time. Samuel Woodruff moved from Farmington to the area then known as “Panthorne.” The settlement grew, prospered, and came to be known as “South Farmington” and then later, the shortened version, “Southington.”

So, in fact, by the time the petition to create a separate Wolcott was submitted, the petition was between Southington and Waterbury, not Farmington and Waterbury.  The parts of Farmington to the north of Wolcott were separated off into Bristol (1785), and Burlington (1806).

The boundary between Farmington and Waterbury was known as the “bound line”, from which the current Boundline Road was derived.  The bound line was a cleared path through the wilderness the entire length of the boundary between these two towns.  How long you might ask – well, certainly much longer than you might think.  It was actually about 17 miles long.  You can trace it on a map today by drawing a straight line.  It starts on Meriden Road slightly to the west of where Todd Road comes out, goes straight up Lewis Avenue, through the woods, follows the N-S portion of Central Avenue where it jogs left then right, continues through the woods and follows Old Boundline Road past the end of Pleasant Street, through the woods again across the end of Scovill Reservoir (that section was displaced when the reservoir was built in 1917), then along the current Boundline Road (ignoring the current zigs and zags around the center of town), crosses Route 69 and continuing up Boundline Road Extension, along a wood path that comes out next to the Krystal Gardens (the former Knights of Columbus), through the woods again to where Wolcott has a slight jog in its northern edge, and continuing along the western boundary of Bristol and then Burlington until that boundary (the edge of Hartford County) ends. Other sections of current road that were built along this line include Overlook Road to the east of Fall Mountain Lake and Town Line Road in Bristol.  I’ve drawn a straight line using Google Earth and it’s amazing how all these sections line up.

On an aerial survey from 1934 (http://magic.lib.uconn.edu/mash_up/1934.html), you can still see the cleared sections above the Wolcott/Bristol boundary.

The land to the east of the “bound line” were laid out in long lots.  Orcutt, in his seminal book, “History of the Town of Wolcott (Connecticut) from 1731 to 1874, with an account of the Centenary Meeting, September 10th and 11th 1873; and with the Genealogies of the Families of the Town” describes it as follows:

The Farmington part was laid into "long lots," being in three tiers, of one mile each. The first tier joined the Waterbury, or the "bound line," the second lay east of the first, and the third east of the second, extending to the foot of Southington Mountain. The whole length of each "long lot" is said (in some of the deeds) to have been three miles. The lots were numbered from north to south, and must have commenced near the northern boundary of Wolcott.

The land to the west of the “bound line” were not so regularly defined. References to property and residences in this part of town would be found in the Waterbury tax records, etc.  Orcutt elsewhere notes that these residents would be “residing in East Branch (afterwards Wolcott), three miles or more from the Meeting House [in Waterbury]”.