Middletown

MIDDLETOWN The area known as Mattabesett, home of the Wangunk Indian tribe, was settled by English colonists from Hartford and Wethersfield in 1650. Situated at the big bend in the Connecticut River, it was named Middletown because it lay halfway between Saybrook and Windsor. Its location on the "Great Tidal River" led to a prosperous shipping economy during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. From Middletown, ships sailed to ports along the East Coast and in the West Indies. Crafts and trades such as pewter-making and shipbuilding flourished, as did agriculture in the surrounding countryside. During the Revolutionary War, Middletown became a center of resistance to the British Crown. Many of its citizens, including such men as Jabez Hamlin; Nehemiah and Elijah Hubbard; Titus Hosmer, Esquire; General Comfort Sage; Colonel Return Jonathan Meigs; and Colonel John Sumner, played important roles in the struggle for American independence. (Continued on other side) MIDDLETOWN (Continued from other side) The town was incorporated as a city in 1784, one of the first five in Connecticut. Commodore Thomas Macdonough, an outstanding naval officer in the War of 1812 against Great Britain, made his home in Middletown and was buried here in Riverside Cemetery. Long the seat of the Court of Middlesex County, Middletown became the site of Wesleyan University in 1831. General Joseph K. F. Mansfield, killed in action at the Battle of Antietam in 1862, and numerous other Middletown men served bravely in the 1861-1865 war to preserve the Union of the North American states. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, immigrants arrived from Ireland, Sweden, Germany, Poland, and Italy, but most notably from the Sicilian town of Melilli. These later arrivals helped to enrich the fabric of the community and, together with others who followed, gave to the City the diverse and cosmopolitan quality it has today.