Windsor, the state’s first English settlement, is located in the northern portion of Hartford County where the Farmington and Connecticut Rivers join. This confluence made the area valuable, as a trade corridor, farmland, and hunting grounds, to the indigenous populations and also to the Europeans who settled there in 1633. Early Windsor served as a port active in West Indies trade. During the 19th century, paper, wool, and cotton mills flourished in its Poquonock section, but it was tobacco farming and brickmaking that dominated its economy from the mid-1600s well into the 1900s. Windsor today is known for diverse corporate and technological enterprises, the Loomis Chaffee School, and its “first town” history.
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Windsor Tobacco: Made in the Shade
By the mid-19th century, the "Tobacco Valley," Springfield, Massachusetts to Hartford, Connecticut had become a center for cash-crop production. …[more]
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Websites
Windsor Historical Society. “Digital Library,” 2016. Link.
Places
Windsor Historical Society. “Dr. Hezekiah Chaffee House,” 2010. Link.
Oliver Ellsworth Homestead Connecticut DAR. “Oliver Ellsworth Homestead,” n.d. Link.
Connecticut Freedom Trail. “Palisado Cemetery,” 2016. Link.
Windsor Historical Society. “Strong House,” 2010. Link.
“The Luddy/Taylor Connecticut Valley Tobacco Museum,” 2017. Link.
“Vintage Radio and Communications Museum of Connecticut,” 2011. Link.
“Windsor Historical Society,” 2016. Link.
Department of Energy & Environmental Protection. “Windsor Meadows State Park,” 2012. Link.
Documents
Pease, Seth. “Map: Map of Windsor, Shewing the Parishes, the Roads, and Houses - True Copy of the Original Map Made by Seth Pease of Suffield, 1798.” Windsor, CT, 1906. Connecticut Historical Society. Link.
Barber, John Warner. “Map: Plan of the Ancient Palisado Plot in Windsor,” 1835. Connecticut History Online, Connecticut Historical Society. Link.
Windsor Collar & Cuff Company. “The ‘Windsor Goods.’” Windsor Collar & Cuff Company, 1902. Link.
Connecticut State Library Digital Collections. “Windsor - WPA Architectural Survey,” 2013. Link.
“Windsor Collection.” Connecticut Digital Archive, n.d. Link.
Books
Howard, Daniel. A New History of Old Windsor, Connecticut. Windsor Locks, CT: Journal Press, 1935. Link.
Windsor Business Men’s Association. Ancient and Modern Windsor. Windsor, CT: Windsor Business Men’s Association, 1913. Link.
Stiles, Henry. The History and Genealogies of Ancient Windsor, Connecticut Including East Windsor, South Windsor, Bloomfield, Windsor Locks, and Ellington. 1635-1891. Genealogies and Biographies. Vol. 2. Hartford, CT: Case, Lockwood & Brainard Company, 1891. Link.
Stiles, Henry. The History and Genealogies of Ancient Windsor, Connecticut Including East Windsor, South Windsor, Bloomfield, Windsor Locks, and Ellington. 1635-1891. History. Vol. 1. Hartford, CT: Case, Lockwood & Brainard Company, 1891. Link.
Windsor Historical Society. Windsor. Charleston, SC: Arcadia, 2007.