Walnut Hill Park, New Britain – Jerry Dougherty
The city of New Britain is located in central Connecticut and is a part of Hartford County. Once known as the “Great Swamp” in the Berlin section of Farmington, in 1754 the colony approved the area as a new parish and named it New Briton. By the beginning of the 19th century, New Britain had made its mark as an emerging industrial village. Nicknamed the Hardware City, New Britain has been home to the Stanley Works, the American Hardware Corporation, and various other large manufacturing companies. By 1913, the American Hardware Corporation was Connecticut’s largest employer with 12,000 workers. Today, New Britain is a working-class community known for its large Polish population. In 2010, Stanley Works purchased Black & Decker and it remains headquartered in the city.
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New Britain’s Yankee Peddlers Boost 18th-century Economy
While the rural economy of the North in the 18th century focused on local exchanges of goods within a community, Yankee peddlers used their mobility to bring finished products directly to the consumer. …[more]
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“Local History Room.” 2012. New Britain Public Library. http://www.nbpl.info/localhistory.html.
Stanley Works Inc. 1919. “8 Garages and Their Stanley Garage Hardware.” http://www.archive.org/stream/8garagestheirsta00stan#page/2/mode/2up.
Larson, Kenneth. 1975. A Walk Around Walnut Hill, New Britain, Connecticut: An Architectural and Historical Survey in Photographs, Drawings, Maps, and Text of the Buildings and Sites in the Area Surrounding Walnut Hill. Brooklyn, NY: Kalarson.
Fowler, Herbert. 1960. A History of New Britain. New Britain, CT: New Britain Historical Society.
Shepard, James. 1901. New Britain Patents and Patentees: With a List of New Britain Patents Prior to 1901, Arranged Alphabetically as to Patentees. New Britain, CT: J. Shepard. http://www.archive.org/stream/newbritainpatent00shep#page/n3/mode/2up.
Thibodeau, Patrick. 1989. New Britain: The City of Invention: An Illustrated History. Chatsworth, CA: Windsor Publications.
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