A Brief History of Goshen

On March 3, 1636, members of the Massachusetts Bay Colony departed, headed west, and established on the banks of the Connecticut River, the town of Hartford (also known as the Connecticut River Colony), which became the center of the Connecticut Colony. This Colony developed what is considered to be the first written document similar to a Western style constitution in America: “The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut.”  Within a year, another colony was formed: the New Haven Colony.

In 1662, King Charles II of England, at the request of the governor of the Connecticut Colony, granted a charter that legalized the Connecticut River and New Haven Colonies and gave them substantial rights of self-government.  In 1664, the Connecticut and the New Haven Colonies merged.

However, the north-west section of the Connecticut Colony, then called “the western lands,” was settled and developed much later than other parts of the state. The soil of this sparsely populated wilderness was considered of insufficient quality for farming but good for grazing.  The land north of Litchfield was called New Bantam. The Housatonic River was called the Ousatunnuck River.

            In 1686, the western lands were conveyed by the British Crown to the towns of Hartford and Windsor.   In 1731, the General Assembly of the Connecticut  Colony created a committee to consider what to do with the western lands and to lay out towns. The committee decided to lay out five towns (Norfolk, Canaan, Goshen, Cornwall, and Kent), and, in October of 1732, the General Assembly approved the committee’s report.

In 1733, the Connecticut General Assembly passed an act to provide for the sale by auction of the western lands.  A year later, another act provided that a portion of the land be called Goshen, after the Land of Goshen in Egypt. In the fall of 1738, fifty of the fifty-three parcels were sold to the highest bidders, called “proprietors,” some of whom were land speculators. One parcel was reserved for a church, one for a minister, and one for a school.  A portion of the lands, 1,500 acres (300 acres from each of the five towns), were leased to Yale University for 999 years.

Goshen, eager and impatient to impose a tax on the properties, did so in 1739,  its first town meeting.  Ten years later, Goshen was incorporated.   

For additional information on the history of the Town of Goshen, see Quadrimillennium Editorial Committee “Goshen Connecticut: a town above all others” (Phoenix Publishing 1990); Hibbard A.G.  “History of the Town of Goshen, Connecticut with Genealogies and Biographies” (1897); Woodruff, George C. History of the Town of Litchfield, Connecticut (Charles Adam 1845); Vermilyea, Peter C. “Hidden History of Litchfield County” (History Press 204).