Many readers of my various blogs about Wolcott will know that the town was known as Farmingbury before it was incorporated and recognized by the State of Connecticut in 1796 and was then renamed Wolcott in honor of Lt. Governor Oliver Wolcott who cast the deciding vote in favor of that incorporation. But what was the basis of it being named Farmingbury, and can we still see any of the residual of the decisions that had been made prior to 1796? Through the use of a number of maps, I’d like to explore that question.
Connecticut Town Formation
In the early days of the Colony of Connecticut and then the State of Connecticut following the Revolutionary War, the towns/cities were fairly large geographic areas. The below partial map of the state from around that time shows the area immediately around what is now Wolcott (*1).
[Map from 1776]
Let’s look at just two of these towns, Farmington and Waterbury. Farmington is roughly rectangular and occupies the entire area west of Hartford and Wethersfield. There are a few villages within the town, including New Cambridge (later to be renamed Bristol), and Southington (an abbreviation for South Farmington). Waterbury also occupies a much larger area than it does now. It includes the villages of North Bury, West Bury, and Salem. Note also that the river that runs up that valley is called the Waterbury River – it later was renamed as the Naugatuck River.
Farmingbury is too small a place to be noted on the map.
Now let’s look at a newer map of roughly the same area from the present day (*2).
[Map from 2020]
Based on the dates in (*3), the following towns have been carved out of Farmington: Southington (1779), Bristol (1785), most of Berlin (1785), Burlington (1806 from Bristol), Avon (1830), New Britain (1850 from Berlin), and Plainville (1869). Similarly, Waterbury has been broken up into: Watertown (1780), Plymouth (1795 from Watertown), Middlebury (1807), part of Prospect (1827), Naugatuck (1844), and Thomaston (1875 from Plymouth),
Wolcott was carved out of both Waterbury and Farmington (actually from Southington). Although Wolcott was not incorporated until 1796, the first petition to do so was several years earlier. The timing here is likely some of the reason why the first few attempts were not approved and why even the 1796 petition met with resistance.
In 1787, the only town which had split off of Waterbury was Watertown and that had only happened a few years earlier. Similarly, the only splits from Farmington had been Southington and Bristol. All of these had also been of much larger populations. Farmingbury was not only a very small community, but by spanning the border of New Haven and Hartford counties, they were disrupting things in a significant way, i.e. it was not just carving off a piece of one town, but carving off sections of two towns in two different counties. That they were ultimately successful in doing so is a tribute to their tenacity as well as the assistance of the Lt. Governor who cast the tie-breaking vote in the State Senate.
Residual Features
The below maps are all snipped from a “parcel viewer” from the Wolcott Assessors office (*4).
The border between the Waterbury portion and the Farmington portion of Farmingbury is the “bound line”. I have discussed that earlier in (*5). The land to the east of the “bound line” was 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 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.
But can we find evidence of all of this today? The answer is a resounding yes! Let’s look at a number of examples. First, let’s look at an overview of the entire area.
[Parcels – overview]
You can see in this picture the western boundary of Hartford County (the former boundary of all of Farmington). The roughly North-to-South line enters Wolcott at the jog in the northern boundary of the town and proceeds down to the southern edge of town. Let’s zoom in and look a little closer at this boundary line.
[Parcels – town overview]
Here you can still see the residual of this former county line. It’s clearly visible in the edge of properties in the middle part of the town in the northern section, fades out near Center Street, then reappears a little fainter in the area below Scovill Reservoir. Also note (1) the presence of another parallel north-to-south line spaced a bit to the east of the bound line (comprised of Route 69, Woodtick Road, County Road, and East Street in the southern end. There are also some large rectangular pieces of property in the NE part of town. Let’s zoom in on several of these features.
[Parcels – NE]
Looking at the NE part of town we can clearly see the remains of several of the “long lots” that were a part of the original Farmington/Farmingbury, even in the part of town to the west of Route 69. Also note the parallel lines – the leftmost one being the residual of the bound line border of the two counties now only viewable in property lines, the center one being Route 69 north of Woodtick Road, another one farther east being Beecher Road, and the border of Wolcott being on the eastern edge of this picture. The blue line which traces property lines from the former Bound Line Road to the intersection of Route 69 and Woodtick Road is exactly one mile in length!
[Parcel – SE]
Here we have a similar portion of town near Hitchcock Lake. Again, note that there are several property lines running at the same angle (a right angle to the former Bound Line Road. Bound Line Road here no longer exists by that name, but one residual that remains is the jog in Central Ave. Again, the blue line from that jog to East Street is exactly one mile in length!
[Parcels – NE cemeteries]
Finally, I want to zoom in one final feature. Here we see a wooded section near the Wilson Road intersection with Woodtick Road. Woodtick Road here is one mile east of Bound Line Road. The diagonal road on the east side of the map is a now closed part of Beecher Road and the road running to the east from it is part of the New Britain Reservoir property and runs all the way to the edge of Wolcott. The path in the woods and the road to the east form the edge of one of the “long lots”. The old Pike’s Hill Cemetery is about where the “N” along the path is located, and the old Northeast Burying Ground is right where the path comes out on Beecher Road.
[Parcels – Escarpment]
Before leaving these parcel views, I want to look at one final one which shows the complete eastern side of Wolcott. Here you can clearly see that the portion carved out of Farmington is a five-sided figure. The western edge is the former “bound line”. The northern edge is perpendicular to that edge and runs about 2.5 miles in an ENE direction. The eastern edge is parallel to the bound line and runs south until it runs into the escarpment which drops off into what is now Southington. It then jogs slightly to the right and follows the escarpment down to a point which meets the former southern edge of Hartford County, then it turns back WSW to the southern end of the “bound line”.
Thus, we see from Farmington’s (Southington’s) perspective, it was a “carve out” defined by a combination of county edges and a geographic feature of the uncrossable escarpment.
Conclusion
The history of the town of Wolcott is a composite of many factors. The shape of the town was dictated by a combination of geography (an escarpment which was nearly uncrossable by roads), the decision by early colonial settlers at defining county boundaries, timing (when the town fathers requested that the town be founded relative to other towns being carved out of the larger ones), and politics (the tie-breaking vote by Lt. Governor Oliver Wolcott).
It is now over 200 years later, with the 225th anniversary of the town just a month or so away. And we can still see some of the residuals of that long-ago time in lot lines, major roads (both their direction and distances between them) which ran along the edges of lot lines, and even the location of some of the cemeteries (which were also located on the edges of lot lines – all features that may be imperceptible unless you look at a high-above overview of these features!
Many things have changed over the years with new roads, subdivisions, etc. reshaping the town. But the echoes of those long ago times still resound in many ways.
Notes:
*1 - https://www.flickr.com/photos/uconnlibrariesmagic/3332887013/in/set-72157617878169122/
*2 - https://jud.ct.gov/ADA/ct_map.htm
*3 - https://ctstatelibrary.org/cttowns/counties
*4 - https://wolcott.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=e22cf98e70004152ae7dfbecdeabc769
*5 - https://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2015/04/wolcott-history-farmingbury-part-1.html
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