One Of The Oldest Towns In The U.S., Windsor, Connecticut Is Now 384-Years-Old
By Lisa Sammons|Published November 01, 2021
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Lisa Sammons
Author
Lisa loves animals and has dogs, rats, cats, guinea pigs, and snakes. She is passionate about animal rescue and live music - traveling across the country to see a favorite band is a pretty regular occurrence! Being out hiking in the woods enjoying the scenery with her beloved dogs is another favorite hobby, and also checking out the Pokemon Go scene in whatever city she happens to be in at any given time (coffee and dog leash in hand). You can reach Lisa at lsammons@onlyinyourstate.com
As one of the original 13 colonies, there’s a lot of history in Connecticut. We’ve got charming downtown areas steeped in the grandeur of age. There are plenty of Revolutionary War and colonial era homes and museums. Most of our early towns have at least one building that is several hundred years old. But when it comes to age, there’s one town that tops all the rest. Windsor was first settled by Europeans in 1633, making it the oldest city in Connecticut and one of the oldest towns in America.
Like much of Connecticut, Windsor's land was originally resided in by Native Americans. The Pequot and Mohegan nations were the primary tribes that made up the population.
The Podunk tribe was having territorial squabbles with the Pequot. A group of European settlers from Massachusetts was invited in to the area to serve as an unbiased arbitrator. In return for their services, they were given the area that is now Windsor.
This original group of settlers was displaced as a group came in from other areas of Massachusetts. Confusingly enough, the town was named Dorchester after the Massachusetts town these new settlers came from.
In 1637, the town was incorporated as a town. It was renamed Windsor after the famed city in England that houses Windsor Castle.
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Windsor was notable for being part of the country's earliest "highway" system in the 1600s. It was certainly nothing like the intricate system developed in the 1950s. However, it did connect Windsor with Hartford and several other early colonial towns.
As European settlements grew and the nation developed, the demand for tobacco became insatiable. By the 1900s, Windsor was one of the leading tobacco growers in the nation.
There were once 12 tobacco farms in Windsor alone, with thousands of acres dedicated to the cash crop. You can still see many of the old barns that were used to dry tobacco if you drive through Windsor's rural areas.
The area would also become filled with various textile mills, which were prolific in New England.
