March 8, 2024
The Creation of South Windsor
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Thank you to Gary Pitcock for providing me with copies of the original documents relating to the incorporation of South Windsor, CT, and for taking the time to tell me about the Elmore family, specifically Harvey Elmore. |
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Image of Harvey Elmore courtesy of Gary Pitcock.
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Harvey Elmore was the State Representative from the town of East Windsor who, along with 350 other townspeople, petitioned the Connecticut General Assembly to divide East Windsor into two towns with the new town to be called South Windsor. According to Gary Pitcock's research, referred to in a 1995 Hartford Courant article, Elmore's ancestor John Elmer, signed a petition for the first church to be built on the on the east side of the Connecticut River, and Samuel Elmer, Harvey's grandfather was the first to settle in the Long Hill area of town. (The Elmer family changed the spelling of their surname in Harvey's generation from Elmer to Elmore.)
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According to the handwritten petition, the town of East Windsor was "...about nine miles long and six miles broad covering an area of about fifty square miles and has a population of thirty six hundred inhabitants..." The population was large enough to divide and still have two reasonably sized towns.
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The core of the argument for dividing the town was distance. In the days before cars, when people were traveling on foot or by horse, four to ten miles was a long distance to travel, especially during inclement weather. They alternated between the First and Second Society Meeting Houses for their town meetings and elections, one being in the northern part of town, the other the southern part. The result of this was that everyone was inconvenienced at one time or another, and so the majority of both northern and southern residents were in favor of the split.
The petition was granted and the new town of South Windsor was incorporated on May 7, 1845. The dividing line between the towns commenced "at the mouth of Scantic River and running thence South 84 degrees nine minutes East 407 chains 75 links to Ellington town line." For those wondering, a chain is exactly 22 yards (66 feet) long and divided into 100 links. There are 80 chains in a mile. |
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Image of Map of East Windsor prior to 1845.
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The handwritten resolution of the General Assembly set "the first town meeting of the new town of South Windsor" to be held "at the meeting house of the First Society, on the first Monday of August AD1845" with Theodore Elmer acting as moderator.
There have been several different buildings and two separate locations along South Windsor's Main Street where the meeting house of the First Society, or what we would currently call the First Congregational Church, has stood. At the time of this first town meeting, the meeting house that they would have gathered in would have stood in the northeast corner of the Old Burial Ground (Edwards' Cemetery) near the the current location of the Masonic Lodge. Ebenezer Pinney became South Windsor's first town clerk and Benoni O. King became the town's first representative to the Connecticut State General Assembly.
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Sources use for this Musings From Main:
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Celebration of Founder's Day to Focus on Past Generations Hartford Courant, May 4, 1995, retrieved March 8, 2024.
In Early South Windsor, Northern Connecticut Bazaar, October 29, 1974. -
South Windsor Spread Over Wide Area Many Years Ago, The Journal Inquirer, September 9, 1970.
Trumbull, James Hammond, The Memorial History of Hartford County, Connecticut, 1633-1884; Boston, E. L. Osgood, 1886, retrieved March 8, 2024.
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