# East Hartford, Hartford County, Connecticut in the 1770s

> A river-edge farming parish, still legally Hartford, with mills, militia, ferries, and war work pressing into daily life.

- Place: East Hartford, Hartford County, Connecticut (41.782, -72.612)
- Years: 1770 to 1779
- Page: https://yorehistory.com/place/east-hartford-hartford-county-connecticut/1770s
- Step into it (interactive): https://yorehistory.com/?step=East%20Hartford%2C%20Hartford%20County%2C%20Connecticut%2C%20United%20States&at=41.7823,-72.6120&year=1775

## Looking around

You stand on the first rise east of the Connecticut River meadows, where the ground is high enough to be safe from the river’s floods[1]. Westward lies the ferry route to Hartford[1], because no bridge crosses here yet. The road underfoot is the old King’s Highway[1], running past the parish center and burying ground. Around you are river meadows used for cultivation and pasture[1], with the Hockanum River falling away toward mill sites. At Pitkin Falls, water turns work: a fulling mill, powder mill, foundry, and forges[1] stand in the late 1770s. This is not yet a separate town; nearly 2,000 of Hartford’s 5,000 people live east of the river[1]. The cemetery holds brownstone and granite tablets with winged soul effigies[1], and a minister’s meetinghouse anchors the ecclesiastical society. News and orders come across the river from Hartford, and war has already pulled forty-nine local officers and men toward Roxbury[2].

## Work: Meadows, mills, and war powder

The ordinary base of work was farming: fertile, rock-free river land[1] and meadow pasture. At Pitkin Falls, the Hockanum powered a fulling mill, powder mill, foundry, and forges[1], so some labor followed water, iron, cloth, and war supply rather than fields.

## Faith: A parish before a town

This was an ecclesiastical community before it was a civil town: the east side had its own Third Ecclesiastical Society of Hartford[1] long before incorporation. Congregational life also shaped public obligations, because church, taxation, parish boundaries, and the calendar were still intertwined in Connecticut.

## Law & power: Hartford ruled across the river

Local people were still under Hartford’s town government because East Hartford was not incorporated until 1783[1][4]. Their long campaign for separation began because crossing the Connecticut River for public business was a hardship[1].

## In the air: Separation and revolution

Two public arguments mattered here: whether the east side should break from Hartford, and whether Britain could still command the colonies. The Revolution was not distant politics; forty-nine local officers and men marched to Roxbury[2] in 1775.

## What people feared: Flood, powder, and war

Settlement clustered on high ground because the town center was safe from periodic Connecticut River flooding[1]. The powder mill added wartime usefulness and danger, as gunpowder was being made in East Hartford in 1775[5].

## Home & table: Farmhouses near a burying ground

The old center held the community’s burying ground, where eighteenth-century markers showed skulls, winged soul effigies, and carved borders[1]. Details of ordinary farmhouse interiors are a gap: no local online source found here describes them.

## Who lived here: Two thousand east of Hartford

By 1774, the east side held about 2,000 of Hartford’s 5,000 residents[1]. Power was unequal: the Pitkin family held exceptional local influence[1][6], while the burial record also shows African Americans in the community[1].

## Roads & news: Ferry, highway, Hartford

News, lawsuits, officials, printed papers, and strangers came by the ferry to Hartford[1] and along the King’s Highway[1]. There was no bridge yet, so the river remained both a road and a barrier.

## Year by year

- **1770** (here): East-side Hartford residents entered the decade still outside town incorporation, despite petitions that had begun decades earlier.[1]
- **1774** (here): About 2,000 of Hartford’s 5,000 residents lived east of the Connecticut River.[1]
- **1775** (here): A company of forty-nine East Hartford officers and men marched to Roxbury after Lexington and Concord.[2]
- **1775** (here): A Pitkin powder mill in East Hartford began making gunpowder for the Revolutionary struggle.[5]
- **1776** (the country): The Declaration of Independence turned the imperial crisis into a formal war for independence.
- **1777** (nearby): British forces surrendered at Saratoga in New York, a victory people in Connecticut would have heard discussed as a turning point.
- **1778** (the world): France entered the war as an American ally, making French troops and money part of the world that later reached East Hartford.[2]
- **1781** (here): Rochambeau’s French army stopped in East Hartford and camped north of Silver Lane on the way toward Washington’s army.[2]

## What the sources say

- East Hartford was not yet incorporated in the 1770s; it remained the east-side part of Hartford until the General Assembly incorporated East Hartford in October 1783. (from the sources)[1][4]
- By 1774, about 2,000 of Hartford’s 5,000 residents lived east of the Connecticut River. (from the sources)[1]
- Travel between the east side and Hartford used a ferry until the first bridge was built in 1808. (from the sources)[1]
- Present-day Main Street had been laid out in 1670 as the King’s Highway. (from the sources)[1]
- The old town center stood on the first terrace of high ground east of the Connecticut River meadows, safe from periodic flooding. (from the sources)[1]
- The Connecticut River floodplain here had fertile, rock-free soil suited to cultivation, and the riverside meadows served as natural pasture. (from the sources)[1]
- By the late 1770s, four dams on the Hockanum River at Pitkin Falls powered a fulling mill, powder mill, foundry for mill screws and castings, and forges making nails and iron bars. (from the sources)[1]
- Cultivation of the rich soil was East Hartford’s chief economic activity for more than 200 years after settlement. (from the sources)[1]
- Center Cemetery’s eighteenth-century stones included brown or reddish sandstone, granitic schist, and designs such as skulls, winged soul effigies, and vine-like borders. (from the sources)[1]
- The Third Ecclesiastical Society of Hartford, serving inhabitants east of the Connecticut River, had been established by the General Assembly in 1694. (from the sources)[1]
- East-side residents had petitioned for separation from Hartford beginning in 1726, citing the hardship of crossing the Connecticut River for public business. (from the sources)[1]
- In 1775, a company of forty-nine officers and men from East Hartford marched to Roxbury under Lieutenant-Colonel George Pitkin. (from the sources)[2]
- Colonel George Pitkin was commandant of the Fourth Regiment of minute-men in 1775 and marched with it to Roxbury during the siege of Boston. (from the sources)[3]
- Colonel William Pitkin, a son of Governor William Pitkin, served on Connecticut’s Council of Safety during much of the Revolutionary War. (from the sources)[3]
- A powder mill erected by Colonel Pitkin in East Hartford in 1775 supplied war material, though later scholarship says it was not the first powder mill in the colonies. (from the sources)[5]
- In 1781, Rochambeau’s French army stopped at East Hartford and camped on a field north of Silver Lane while moving from Newport toward Washington’s army. (from the sources)[2]
- The French army stopped again in East Hartford on its return east in 1782. (from the sources)[2]
- The Pitkin family held exceptional local power through mills, commerce, militia command, and colonial offices; Governor William Pitkin had served as Connecticut governor until his death in 1769. (from the sources)[1][6]
- The east-side community included African Americans; Center Cemetery contains several African-American burials, including Pomp Equality, who lived from 1759 to 1824. (from the sources)[1]
- No local online source found in this session gives ordinary East Hartford wage rates or household food prices for the 1770s. (not known)
- No local online source found in this session describes the interiors of ordinary East Hartford farmhouses in the 1770s. (not known)
- As across Connecticut, the established Congregational church shaped taxation, parish boundaries, meetinghouse attendance, and the public calendar before disestablishment in 1818. (inferred)

## Sources

1. Central Avenue-Center Cemetery Historic District. LivingPlaces, adapted from National Register nomination, 1993. https://www.livingplaces.com/CT/Hartford_County/East_Hartford_Town/Central_Avenue-Center_Cemetery_Historic_District.html
2. Historic Towns of the Connecticut River Valley, Part 18. LDSGenealogy, reprint, 1906. https://ldsgenealogy.com/CT/books/Historic-towns-of-the-Connecticut-River-Valley-part-18.htm
3. The Memorial History of Hartford County, Connecticut, 1633-1884. Edward L. Osgood, 1886. https://www.cga.ct.gov/hco/books/Memorial_History_of_Hartford_County_1886.pdf
4. Connecticut Towns in the Order of their Establishment. Connecticut Secretary of the State. https://portal.ct.gov/SOTS/Register-Manual/Section-VII/Connecticut-Towns-in-the-Order-of-their-Establishment
5. History of the American Powder Mills. Columbia University Press preview. https://api.pageplace.de/preview/DT0400.9780231883733_A42994168/preview-9780231883733_A42994168.pdf
6. William Pitkin. Museum of Connecticut History. https://portal.ct.gov/museumofcthistory/knowledge-base/articles/resources/governor-biographies/william-pitkin

## Nearby, about the same time

- [New Hartford, Litchfield County, Connecticut in the 1780s](https://yorehistory.com/place/new-hartford-litchfield-county-connecticut/1780s/md) (53 km)
- [Townsend, Massachusetts in the 1740s](https://yorehistory.com/place/townsend-massachusetts/1740s/md) (123 km)
- [Middleborough, Plymouth County, Massachusetts in the 1770s](https://yorehistory.com/place/middleborough-plymouth-county-massachusetts/1770s/md) (140 km)
- [Lyndeborough, New Hampshire in the 1770s](https://yorehistory.com/place/lyndeborough-new-hampshire/1770s/md) (143 km)

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Researched by Yore's AI historian (gpt-5.5) on 2026-10-26 from the sources listed. It is about the place and the time, not about any person. Statements marked "inferred" are conclusions, not records. Cite as: Yore, "East Hartford, Hartford County, Connecticut in the 1770s", https://yorehistory.com/place/east-hartford-hartford-county-connecticut/1770s