286 Percy Wells Bidwell 



roughly 800 square miles sustained 54,000 persons, an average of 

 67.5 to the square mile. But of the 16 townships into which this 

 area was divided, only two show any considerable size. The fertility 

 of the soil for which this valley was noted, rather than any great 

 amount of non-agricultural activity, seems to have been the cause of a 

 density of population not generally found at this time in farming 

 communities. All the towns below Hartford owned a few small 

 vessels that traded along the coast and to the West Indies. Some 

 built a few ships and occasionally we find the beginning of manu- 

 factures, as in the case of the paper, glass, and powder mills of East 

 Hartford,^ and the gin-distilling business in Windsor and East Wind- 

 sor.- The river furnished such cheap transportation that even so 

 bulky a commodity as building-stone could be quarried in Chatham 

 and East Haddam and marketed in Boston and New York.^ 



Hartford had in 1810, 6,000 inhabitants, of whom perhaps one- 

 half were concentrated in a village of 400 to 500 houses in the center 

 of the town. Here also were the shops, stores and wholesale trading 

 houses. As Hartford was not a port of entry at the time, its commerce 

 is hard to estimate.* Its trade with regions farther inland, especially 

 the towns lying on both sides of the river for 200 or more miles to the 

 northward, was quite large. As a depot for tlie transshipment of 

 agricultural products, and especially those important by-products of 

 pioneer agriculture, potash and pearl ash, Hartford was much more 

 favorably situated than either New Haven, Norwich or New London.* 

 It is probable that a large part of the commercial wealth of the place 

 was derived from this source. Besides the usual craftsmen, which were 

 well represented there, Hartford seems to have had little industrial 

 activity.^ 



'Dwight, Travels, II. 268. 



- Pease and Niles, Gazetteer, pp. 65, 90. 



' Ibid., pp. 279-280. 



* The nearest indication I have been able to find is contained in the papers 

 submitted with the Apphcation for a Branch of the Bank of the United States in 

 Hartford (1817). MSS. in library of the Connecticut Historical Society, Hart- 

 ford, Conn. According to a list (E) there included, 278 vessels paid toll in Hart- 

 ford in 1816. Of these 189 were sloops; 61, schooners; 26, brigs, and 2, ships. 

 There were also 300 entries not liable to duty. These were probably the 

 flat-boats, rafts and smaller craft from up the river. 



^ This is made clear by a map among the papers referred to in Note 4. See 

 also Dwight, Travels, I. 203-204; and KendaU, Travels, I. 86-87. 



^ The woolen mill described by General Washington in his diary in 1788, quoted 

 in Bishop, .\merican Manufactures, I. 418, had been established only a short time. 

 It ran rather irregularly and was poorly equipped. See Wansey, Journal, p. 60. 



