Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. NEW R1UTAIN, 1750-lim FOR several years before New Britain was incorporated as a distinct society, the little community had been exercised by the discussions concerning the division of Kensington, and the questions relating to the petitions and other measures to secure preaching on East Street. The death of Rev. William Burnham, in 1750, gave a new impulse to the efforts which resulted in the incorporation of the society. At that time there were less than forty houses in the territory afterwards embraced in the parish, and in 1850 by the town, and the whole number of inhabitants was loss than three hundred. The first settlers of New Britain were farmers with such limited education as could be obtained at that day. Nearly all had some property, which by frugality and industry was increased after they occupied their new homes. In the eastern part of the parish, commencing at the northern boundary, there was a succession of farms ? some large, and others comprising but a 1'cw acres ? extending southerly, first on the Stanley Road, and then on both Stanley and East streets, to the southern limits of the parish, or to Great Swamp. On the north and west, at irregular intervals, were similar farms, extending from Stanley Quarter and the Farmington Road, along Horse Plain to Pond River, and the source of the Quinnipiac, westerly and southerly, to Hart Quarter, and thence to the Blue Hills in Kensington. In the north part of Stanley Quarter, -on East Street, and in Hart Quarter, there were a few large farm buildings, and at or about the time of the incorporation of the New Britain Society, in 1754, most of these farms were provided with comfortable frame houses and out buildings. Upon the less frequented roads, and near the borders of the place, were a few log cabin..