According to archeological evidence, the Wampanoag people used the area to later become West Hartford as a winter camp, fishing, and hunting along the Connecticut River. The area offered the natives a refuge from both the cold winter wind and the river’s severe spring flooding. In 1636, the Reverend Thomas Hooker led a group of followers from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to ‘the great river’ and established Hartford Colony.
As the colony grew, more land was needed and in 1672, the Proprietors of Hartford decreed that a division be created on the town’s western boundary. By the 1670s, this area came to be referred to as the ‘West Division of Hartford’. This remained its official name until 1806 when the Connecticut General Assembly started referring to it as ‘the society of West Hartford’.
By the time of the Revolutionary War, the once rugged wilderness had been mostly cleared and an agricultural-based community had developed with a population of over a thousand people and three thousand sheep. At its core was a meeting house built around 1712. As the focus of early religious, political, and social life, the meeting house helped provide this area with a name, which is still in common usage in that area today when referring to that particular part of the town; ‘The Center’.
The Center was an important part of the town’s social fabric, providing a valuable service in the life of the community; we at Sure Lock & Key believe we’re carrying on that tradition by offering not only the good people of West Hartford and the surrounding area, but also the people of the great state of Connecticut overall, with the very best local residential, commercial, and automotive locksmith service in the marketplace, bar none.
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