Watertown

WATERTOWN The local Paugasuck Indians sold this area of land to Thomas Judd and thirty-five other proprietors in 1684. The First Ecclesiastical Society of Westbury was formed in 1738 and in 1780 Westbury separated from Waterbury, was named Watertown, and soon became the crossroads of a number of early highways. John Trumbull, poet of the Revolutionary War, lawyer, and judge, was born here in 1750. Products that were first manufactured in Watertown include: Merritt Heminway's spooled silk thread in 1847, Wheeler and Wilson's lock-stitch sewing machine in 1850, and the Watertown Manufacturing Company's plastic shatterproof dinnerware in the 1940's. In 1852 the Oakville Pin Company was one of the first pin factories in this country. A council-manager form of government in 1961 replaced more than one hundred and eighty years of the town meeting-selectman type. Watertown has been the home of Taft School, a college-preparatory institution, since 1893.