OUTLINE SKETCHES

OF THE

HISTORY OF SUFFIELD.

HARTFORD and Saybrook were settled by the English in 1635; Wethersfield in 1634; Middletown, in 1650; Haddam, in 1662; and Lyme, in 1667. These towns were all that were settled in the Connecticut Valley, below Windsor, prior to 1670.
    Windsor* had at this date six or seven hundred inhabitants, and a territory on both sides of the river, forty-six miles in circumference, and nineteen Indians to one Englishman.¥ Within the town of Windsor only, there were ten distinct tribes or sovereignties. Their bowmen were reckoned at two thousand. It was the general opinion that there were nineteen Indians in that town to one Englishman.

SIMSBURY.

  Simsbury, § on the south-west, was incorporated in 1670. It con­tained thirteen Freemen, and other male inhabitants (not Freemen), in all perhaps thirty. The Indians (Massacoes) numbered several hundred. Until the war of 1676 they vastly exceeded the white population; at which time the town was burned, provisions, produce, furniture, fences and farming utensils were collected into heaps, and burned. The town remained deserted for a year, and no attempt was made to rebuild it.
   Simsbury then embraced nearly the whole of the present towns of Simsbury, Granby, East Granby and Canton.
   It was settled from NY, Windsor, and was the twenty-first town incorporated within the Connecticut and New Haven Colonies, which became one in 1665.

SPRINGFIELD.

    Springfield, the parent town of Suffield, was settled in 1636, by families from Roxbury, and was called "Aguam " or "Agawam " until
____________

* Barber's History Coll. 
¥ Trumbull's History of Conn.  
§ Phelps' History of Simsbury.

This page update Wednesday, September 19, 2001
Copyright September 1999 ©, Kathy Camp
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