Division of West Hartford

The division of West Hartford occurred in the 1670's after the foundation of Hartford decades prior. After the division of the Hartford area into parishes, the owners of land in western Hartford decided to divide and settle the region. The division of the land into 72 lots set the precedent for the settlement of the town in the future.

History
Before dividing the land, the proprietors, with typical New England care, drew up “A List of the Proprietors of the Undivided Lands in Hartford on the West Side of the Connecticut River Enrolled in the Town Record in the Year 1671.” The neatly written columns cover nearly two pages of a large book in the Connecticut Historical Society. They include the names of such historic West Hartford families as Andrus, Arnold, Butler, Bull, Peck, Cadwell, Kelsey, Talcott, Goodwin, Goodman, Gridley, Haynes, Hooker, Wadsworth, Hosmer, Steele, Hopkins, Warner, Stanley, Mygatt, Whiting, Olmsted, Pantry, Spencer, Skinner, Wells, Webster, Watson, Judd, and Allyn. Some of these names appeared among the petitioners for a parish in 1710, others among the earliest members of the church, the Revolutionary War militiamen, the petitioners for town government in 1854, and the first town officers. Each man was expected to pay a listed sum for his share.

Early in 1672, the proprietors ordered the division and nearly three years later, their committee laid out an oblong of 72 “Long Lots.” It extended a mile and a half from the foot of Talcott Mountain (Mountain Road) to Quaker Lane, and from the western part of Windsor (Bloomfield) to the South Road to Farmington (New Britain Avenue). That area was divided in sections running east and west according to each proprietor’s proportionate land holdings in Hartford. The sections varied from broad strips to mere slivers. The smaller holdings were so impractical for farming that a great deal of exchanging and selling of land took place. In 1677, a tract from the South Road to the western part of Wethersfield (Newington) was divided into five tiers of lots running north and south – the present Elmwood area. All of the lots laid out in the 1670’s were named the “West Division,” which was the town’s official title until the General Assembly called it “the Society of West Hartford” in 1806. The area from Quaker Lane east to Prospect Avenue and from Windsor to Wethersfield was part of a “Common,” reserved “forever” for the benefit of all landowners. It included also the present part of Hartford west of Woodland Street. Landowners presumed to use the Common as they pleased, and in 1754, it was divided after a legal battle. When West Hartford became a town in 1854, it included the Common west of Prospect Hill Road (Prospect Avenue).

When the Common was later divided into sections or lots, some of these lots became a part of the West Division and others were a part of Hartford.