Category Archives: Names

The term ‘town center’ is one of those terms with assumed knowledge.  We all ‘know’ where the town center is.  Except, of course, when we actually try to define it….

New Hartford’s first town center was the geographic center.  This is an unchanging point, in terms of geography, but it has little social weight.  New Hartford’s geographic town center, supposedly marked by a stone cairn, is deep in a particularly dense and swampy section of forests up on Yellow Mountain, which is the southern nose and flank of Town Hill.

The first social town center was Town Hill.  This point, several thousand yards north of Yellow Mountain, claimed the title between the 1720’s and the 1820’s.  Here the first cemetery, the meeting house, the first Congregational Church, a school, parade ground, and a number of houses created a classic rural New England town center.

In the 1820’s the rise of industry created two new villages: Nepaug and North Village.  Nepaug, just below Yellow Mountain, claimed the title of ‘town center’ at that point.  On several maps from this time period it is labelled as the town center.

However, North Village’s industrial base, which was supported by the water power created by the Greenwoods Dam, outstripped Nepaug in size.  In the 1830’s, ahead of Nepaug, it built a church which replaced Town Hill church.  At this time, the location of a Congregational Church was a statement of the location’s central importance.

Between the 1830’s and the 1870’s, Nepaug and North Village split the pre-eminent function that usually determines the location of a town center: the location of a town meeting.  New Hartford did not have a Town Hall in this period, instead meetings were held on an alternating schedule between the two centers.

In the 1870’s the greater size of North Village won out: the Town Hall was built in it. The maps from this time on no longer label Nepaug as the center.  For most people, the North Village is the town center.

Place names have an astonishing tendency towards repetition; they are usually very local designations.  Frequently, they simply modify more basic geographic terms: farm, town, ford, hill, pond and in the various dialects and languages: a farm is also ‘by’ for example; while ‘town’, ‘ton’, ‘burg’, ‘burgh’, ‘wick’, ‘borough’…etc., all reflect various types of cities, and those terms are not the total list for ones in the English language.  These then tend to be modified by a fairly limited set of adjectives.  In New Hartford, an excellent example of this is ‘West Hill Pond’….there are plenty of hills, and ponds, farther west.  But if one considers the fact that New Hartford also has an East Hill (now Jones Mountain) and a Town Hill, then West Hill makes literal sense: the hill to the west of the town center.

West Hill pond has had two other designations in the past three centuries: ‘Lake Wonksunkmunk’ and ‘Shepard’s Pond’.  Unlike its current name, these two reflect the other common tendency amongst place names: connection to an individual.  Supposedly, Wonksunkmunk was the name of the chief of the Native American tribe, unidentified, that used the area as a seasonal hunting ground in the pre-colonial era.  The other name, ‘Shepard’s Pond, remembers the purported first settler on the pond’s shore: one Daniel Shephard in 1738.

There is, of course, also the issue of whether it is properly a lake or a pond….

In historical study, place names are invaluable tools that can illuminate waves of settlement, previous languages, or the political, economic and cultural priorities of a time period. New Hartford is hardly immune from the importance of names.
For example, on early maps a place is called Mast Swamp, becomes Greenwoods Pond, becomes nameless. This is the stretch of the Farmington River above town running up almost to the local dump in Barkhamsted. Today, the river winds through a broad, flat, marshy floodplain. There is essentially no human activity in the area, aside from those passing through on the river. But the area’s former names, and indeed its namelessness, reflect Connecticut history.
It was first called Mast Swamp because the broad valley of the river contained numerous pine trees ideally suited for building ship timbers and masts. The need for quality timber spurred British exploration and control of North America in the 1700’s, as the British Navy grew in its arms and trade race against France. Marine grade timber was also a valuable resource for the colonists who relied on coastal vessels for contact with the other colonies along the eastern seaboard, in addition to the growth of their own, independent trans-Atlantic trade networks. The name Mast Swamp not only gives clues to the ecological history of the area, but also that the area was valued primarily for its resource potential when the name was given. It was not Pine Swamp, but Mast Swamp.
It then became Greenwoods Pond. I am uncertain as to whether the company takes the name from the area or whether the company’s name is given to the area. Greenwoods was a major textile company, established in New Hartford. It gave its name to the pond (or lake) that it created. When its factories were built in the 1800’s, water power was the industrial power source. In order to power the textile mill, Greenwoods Company built a dam just above the town center and turned Mast Swamp into Greenwoods Pond. The name, therefore, is closely linked to Connecticut’s history as a manufacturing powerhouse. During which time, every river that could be harnessed for power was, and the great red brick mills in the valleys became as ubiquitous as the small red barns of the older, hilltop farms.
But, in 1901 Greenwoods left, moving south searching for cheaper labour and cheaper, more efficient coal power. The dam, and the name, remained until the flood in 1936. When the dam failed, the reason for the name vanished.
Today, it is seen as a part of the Farmington River, the current emphasis being placed on the river itself, as a both a recreational and economic resource.

New Hartford is, of course, named after Hartford; probably for the very simple reason that the first settlers of the new township in 1733 were all from Hartford families. Yet, there is always a tendency to consider other relationships. Hartford sits on the Connecticut River just below the last point of navigation, Windsor Locks; it is, therefore, a sort of gateway into the upper reaches of the Connecticut. A point of transition. New Hartford occupies another point of transition.
As one travels west from Hartford on Route 44, also known as the Albany Turnpike, the Old North Road, or the Great North Road, the first twenty miles are relatively flat (leaving aside Avon Mountain!). But as you cross into New Hartford you hit the first ridge of hills that reach clost to or above a thousand feet. Looking at a map you will see that Ratlum, Satan’s Kingdom, Jones Mountain, Yellow Mountain form the first line of the Berkshires; from here on the road will become a winding road between steadily rising hills. It no longer seems so clear with today’s modern roads, cars and multitude of other state highways; but in the 1700’s New Hartford was a gateway on the main road, just as Hartford was a gateway on the main river.