Africa Was Slave of Waterbury's Fortune

It isn't clear whether a slave named Fortune was born in Waterbury, but it is known that his son, Africa, was.  Fortune's family served Dr. Porter on his 75-acre plantation in Waterbury.  Africa was born in 1772.

Click here for additional information.

​Black History Month: A Waterbury slave's bones
Bing video

State Cantana

On June 3, 2003, the Connecticut General Assembly designated The Nutmeg, Homeland of Liberty by Dr. Stanley L. Ralph as the State Cantata.  The nine-minute cantata was first performed at the B. W. Tinker Elementary School in Waterbury by the school’s 1962 graduating class.  Cantatas are choral compositions usually set to sacred texts, but The Nutmeg relates Connecticut’s history through song. 
​Source: ConnecticutHistory.

Waterbury Time Machine

For a great and comprehensive website of much of Waterbury's highlights over the past 300+ year, visit this (external) Waterbury Time Machine website (no affiliation to WaterburyLife.com).
        Did You Know:

Between the years 1718 and 1895, 457 Waterburians graduated from Yale College.  Many of them became college professors, and some of them had even higher prestige: 
  • Bennett Tyler, President at Dartmouth College
  • Franklin Carter, President of Williams College
  • Franklin Goodrich Woodworth, President of Tougaloo University
  • Jeremiah Day, President of Yale
  • Bethel Judd, President of Saint John's
  • Henry N. Day, President of Ohio Female College
  • Charles H. Seymour, President of Griswold

Articles About Waterbury

When the World Ran on Waterbury Time.
 Did You Know: 
The first high school in Waterbury was built in 1851 in the Centre District, on or near Elm Street.  The building was expanded in 1867.  The school was completely destroyed by fire in 1870, and rebuilt nearby in 1873. 

Historic Businesses

Click here.

Waterbury Watches Still Hot At Timex

Waterbury is well-known as the Time Capital of the Nation.  Most people know that the Thomas family, of the famous Thomas Clock Company and of the town of Thomaston, started in Waterbury.  Some people even know that all Mickey Mouse watches were, for years, only produced in Waterbury.

Most people are not aware that a complete line of watches, due to our reputation for quality, was created in our name.  The brand was sold by a Waterbury company to Timex many years ago, and the sturdy brand lives on.

Read more here at Timex.
Also see: Waterbury's Radium Girls.

Waterbury Water War

"In 1893, Waterbury obtained from the Connecticut legislature a “Special Act” authorizing the city to take as much water as its inhabitants might require from “any an all brooks, rivers, ponds, lakes, and reservoirs” within Litchfield and New Haven Counties."  

For an overview of a related court judgement, go here.
Did You Know:
Waterbury's Population
      in 1850:            5,137
​      in 1860: over 10,000

The Great Flood of '55

Several resources are available at Waterbury's Silas Bronson Library.  Here is a link to one of their source summaries.

Other books include: 
New York Times Proclaims: 
"it is Waterbury that may have the richest baseball history of any city in Connecticut"!
November 3rd, 2020

Other Current and Former Names
​for Waterbury

  1. Matetacoke - aboriginal
  2. Mattatock - 1673, a slang term which forever ostricized an historic syllable 
  3. Mattatuck - slang (anglicized), 1674
  4. Matatucke - rare uses, most probably misspellings  
  5. Matatuck - found mostly in very early settlement days, most probably prior to any official spelling was determined
  6. Mattituck Plantation - yes, we were once a plantation
  7. Mattatucke, 1677 - History of Waterbury, Henry Bronson, M.D., 1858
  8. Farmington - when the Town of Farmington and the Colony of Connecticut first realized the importance of the location, fertility, and value of the water which runs through and under this forested location
  9. Town Plot (when it was part of Farmington)
  10. Town Plot Plantation
  11. The Plantation - still as part of Farmington, now developed into farming and grazing
  12. Town Plot Hill - this is the most accurate name, cardiographically speaking, for the "original settlement"
  13. Old Town Plot
  14. Old Town Platt
  15. Village of Waterbury - early years, pending incorporation
  16. Borough of Waterbury - as incorporated; 1852
  17. Town of Waterbury
    1. - (remained as a separate entity from the City of Waterbury); 
    2. included
      1. everything north and northwest of what is now the intersection of Lakewood and Farmwood Roads (excluding Waterville as it was it's own township
      2. everything east of what is now Wolcott Street north of Manor Avenue (then the border of Waterbury and Wallingford)
      3. other areas
  18. City of Waterbury - modern re-incorporation
  19. Farm Town -
    1. slang; 
    2. until the flourishing of industry, Waterbury was largely wooded and cultivated for large farms
  20. Land Without Trees -
    1. literal translation of the aboriginal Metetacoke
    2. aboriginal, and ironic term, translation
  21. Little Brass City of the Universe
  22. Brass Capital of the World
  23. Brass Center of the World
    1. ​a truly deserved nickname based on it's brass history which began in the year 1802 
  24. Time Capital of the Nation -
    1. ​an underused but accurate description; in this case, "time" includes, of course, clocks and watches, and also "timing", as in timing devices such as time-activated detonation mechanisms ("time bombs"), and regulators. 
    2. This lead to gyroscopes - devices which allow missiles to be guided due to their ability to measure distance and therefore location.
    3. the time industry in Waterbury began at some time prior to 1857
    4. at one point, it was said that "all of the world sets it's time to Waterbury"
  25. ​Switzerland of America -
    1. referencing our command of the time industry
    2. Read the ConnecticutHistory.org article here.
    3. ​or here.
  26. City of Neighborhoods
    1. - colloquially, endearingly 
  27. Dirty Water -
    1. ​slang
    2. used primarily by uneducated, uninformed, and willfully ignorant pea brains
    3. Ironic
      1. ​as per our reputed "sweetest water in the country" and
      2. as per the fact that our treated water is so pure that our water treatment systems have been the subject of scientific research and duplicated in many other U.S. cities
  28. Walled City
    1. - no physical basis but colloquially used
  29. Center of the Universe -
    1. ​a hopeful and accurate dubbing of the human endurance and resources within Waterbury
    2. credited to John Rowland, former Connecticut State Representative, Connecticut Governor, and resident at the Connecticut Department of Corrections
  30. ​Epi-Center of the Universe
    1. - an extension of the realization of Waterbury's vast resources, drive and endurance; a complementary take on former Governor Rowland's dub for our great city.
  31. ​Sintown
  32. Sin City
  33. King Sintown - Perhaps a result of:
    1. "The ease at which one can find a willing woman in Waterbury makes Paris look like an all-girls seminary". - DARE, 1956
    2. Blodgett's Brothel of the early 1870s -the "house of ill-fame"
    3. A very popular set of 4 "strip bars" within a mile of each other which, for several decades, beginning around 1960 to date, dotted the area of the streets of Chase and Huntindgon Avenues.
    4. Numerous "night clubs" throughout the city, "more than any other city in Connecticut", throughout the late 1970s into the early 1990s
    5. The well-known, or little-known, 6 thriving "gay" bars of the same period
    6. a derivative of "the only one town north of the Mason-Dixon line that holds the undisputed title of King Sintown"
    7. The frequency of our Mayor's being convicted of crimes and serving time for those crimes
    8. The near take-over of the city by California's "los Solidos" in the late 1980s through their forced retirement by a coalition under then Waterbury Mayor Joseph Santopietro of the Waterbury Police Department, in cooperation with the Connecticut State Troopers and three federal agencies in the early 1990s
  34. La città di ottone - Italian for "the city of brass"
    1. ​https://www.wethersfieldhistory.org/articles/the-story-of-connecticuts-italians/​
  35. Little Italy - much of the South End of Waterbury was originally populated by people of Italian descent, most of the North End of Waterbury was also, and still is, populated largely by people of Italian descent, and Town Plot Hill has, since the early to mid 1900s been populated by a plurality of people of Italian descent.  East Mountain, Bunker Hill, and many East End neighborhoods also brag about high Italian populous.  Hence, the City in general, and, now, Town Plot Hill, is referred to, colloquially and to most people who are in any way familiar with Waterbury, as Little Italy.
  36. Waterbury Old Society - term of endearment, unknown etymology, rare use, historically documented
  37. ​Button Capital
    1. ​It has been said for years that "Waterbury has something on everybody" because on everybody who wears clothing there is a button, hook, fastener, or attachment - referencing the mass-manufacturing of buttons, and other fasteners, at Waterbury's factories. 
    2. Waterbury has the largest button industry in all of the world.  The button industry has its roots in Waterbury as early as 1824, and was officially started in 1950.
  38. ​Welfare Capital of Connecticut - which is no small feat in a state that's referred to as the Welfare Capital of the Country
  39. Hitler's #1 Target 
    1. ​During his entire reign, Adolf Hitler's number one target was the City of Waterbury
      1. ​We were known as "the city that can turn time and buttons into tanks and airplanes" due to our already well established brass, time (including timers for time bombs and gyros for airplanes), our human skill set, our proximity to other important targets, and the plentiful rivers which ensured our continued success
    2. ​German soldiers, an entire battalion of them, learned
      1. the names of our streets, the compass directions of each of our downtown streets, the names of our neighborhoods, the terrains, the waterways and water systems,
      2. English and our Connecticut accent,
      3. the locations and product lines of our major factories,
      4. the distance and directions from Waterbury to
        1. New York City
        2. Boston
        3. the Connecticut shore
      5. then names of our schools, and
      6. as much about our complicated culture as they could.  
  40. ​​The City With the Sweetest Water in the Nation 
    1. ​until 2003, when that title shifted to the foreign land called Memphis Tennessee.
  41. The 4th Most Important City in the United States
    1. - we were outranked by Detroit, Philadelphia, and Washington D. C.
  42. Home of the Mickey Mouse Watch

Some Waterbury Facts

  • There are currently well over 6,000 business in Waterbury. 
  • Over 100 books were written about Waterbury. 
  • There are over 30 cemeteries in Waterbury. 
  • We have over 130 places of worship in Waterbury. 
  • There are over 100 historic places in Waterbury.
  • There are over 100 distinct ethnicities which are well-represented in Waterbury.
  • There are 52 parks in Waterbury.
  • Over 400 noteworthy and important people were born in Waterbury.
  • There are 1,450 streets in Waterbury.

Click here for much more information and many more Lists.
​

Timeline Waterbury

  • 1686: the Town of Waterbury was established out of the Town of Farmington
  • 1776: Moses Dunbar of Waterbury was charged with high treason, and put to death for it.  October, 1776.
  • 1800: Waterbury became nationally renowned as having the "sweetest water" in the country, circa 1800
  • 1849 The Naugatuck Railroad was completed
  • 1852 The Borough of Waterbury was lighted with gas
  • 1853: The City of Waterbury was established
  • ​1853: The City of Waterbury established it's first police department.  History of the Waterbury police department here.
  • 1875: Waterbury was identified as a major city in the United States.
  • 1862: Waterbury's first City Hall was opened in 1862 - and it faced The Green.
  • ​1874: Waterbury was identified as one of the 5 most important cities in the nation
  • 1875: Flood of 1875
  • 1877: Telephone lines were installed in Waterbury
  • 1884: Waterbury became lighted with electricity
  • 1888: Blizard of '88 (the year 1888; 50" of snow in 48 hours)
  • 1901: The Town of Waterbury and the City of Waterbury were consolidated
  • 1902: "Waterbury Burns", the city's worst fire in her history, caused $2,000,000 (in 1902 money).  Read more here.
  • 1912: City Hall burns to the ground, 1912
  • 1918: Spanish Influenza epidemic of 1918, 654 died in one month, over 1,200 died in 3 months; Connecticut History Article.
  • 1919: The "Red Scare" and the Palmer Raids of 1919
  • 1936: Flood of 1936
  • 1950 to date: 38 tornadoes hit Waterbury since the year 1950; there were no known recorded tornadoes in Waterbury before 1950
  • 1955: Flood of 1955
  • 1962: Tornado of 1962
  • 1978: Blizard of '78 (the year 1978)
  • 1981: Two earthquakes hit Waterbury, registering 3.5 and 3.8 Richters​​

Historic Trivia

Waterbury once bordered Farmington (where the Town of Wolcott's Farmingbury is now), Northbury (which lead to "the Wilderness", later to become Litchfield), Woodbury, Milford, and Wallingford (approximately where Wolcott Street is today).

Pioneer Steel Ball Company

The Pioneer Steel Ball Company was founded in 1946 by Nicholas Martinelli.  Of Italian descent, Martinelli was born in Waterbury and subsequently raised his family here.  After the Flood of 1955, which destroyed his manufacturing and processing company, Martinelli re-opened his company in Unionville, Connecticut.  After 42 years, the company was consolidated and sold.

Further reading: The Flood of 1955 in the Farmington Valley Region.​

Interesting Reads

Waterbury's Radium Girls.
Dating Clocks By Their Labels.
​

Other Facts

In the mid 1850s, there was a quarry located at approximately the intersection of the southeastern-most part of Hill Street and about the half-way point of Bucks Hill Road.  This part of Bucks Hill Road is now relabeled as North Main Street.

Waterbury Hospital used to be on Hospital Avenue, near Ledgeside Avenue, between Wilson Street and Riverside Avenue, back in (and before and after) 1899.

​In the year 1800, James harrison constructed a water wheel on Little River in Waterbury, along North Main Street (probably south of the current Cherry Street).  This was the first water wheel erected in Waterbury for the purpose of driving manufacturing machinery.

The first settlers (excluding the aboriginals) of what is now Waterbury, were called Planters; this refers to the fact that the Colony of Connecticut knew of this place as fertile planting grounds.  In the list of many names for what we call Waterbury is "Farmington Plantation" and later "Town Plot Plantation".

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