Winchester

In 1686 the General Court of the Connecticut Colony granted Hartford and Windsor lands north of Woodbury and west of Simsbury for plantations or villages, and in 1732 the Hartford proprietors named in a 1729 patent executed a deed dividing the Hartford share, including the part that became Winchester. The General Assembly incorporated the Town of Winchester in May, 1771, after first authorizing an ecclesiastical society in Winchester township in May, 1786, with its meetinghouse near the present Winchester Center Green and a later one on it. In 1778 the Assembly established the Ecclesiastical Society of Winsted from Winchester and Barkhamsted townships on Old North Road, but the opening of the Greenwoods Turnpike in 1799 from New Hartford to Sheffield shifted heavy traffic to the valleys, where settlers along the Still River erected a second meetinghouse near the present Winsted Green. Winsted became an incorporated borough in 1858 and a city in 1917. Since the late 1700's, the Winchester-Winsted community has prospered through industry, including scythes, thread, clocks, electrical items, ball bearings, and one of the few pin factories in the United States during the 1800's. David Austin built the first grist mill in 1771 at the foot of Highland Lake, Benjamin Jenkins and James Boyd built one of the state's first scythe factories at Lake and Meadow Streets in 1792, the Hoadleys and Whitings founded a clock industry here in 1897 that became the Gilbert Clock Company in 1871, ribbon candy was invented in a local candy store in the 1880's, and the Gilbert School, founded in 1895, became the home of Northwestern Connecticut Community College in 1965.

Winsted, Connecticut · United States