The main purpose of collecting census data is to distribute congressional seats, electoral votes and appropriate funding. However, historians and genealogists have found census information to be of critical importance in researching a town’s or family’s history. Here's a look back to the 1910 census and some of the information we found about our town.
Bray Rossiter (1610-1672) was born to a family of wealth and power. They were Puritans, but were also loyal to the royal family. Bray was well-educated and likely received some medical training before coming to New England aboard the Mary and John in 1630, along with his father Edward, an influential Assistant of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and eleven other family members and servants.
Deacon John Moore was at the center of a nexus of important woodworking families that extended through four generations to include the Drakes, Bissells, Loomises, Barbers, Griswolds, Stoughtons and others. Together, these families largely controlled the woodworking trade in the region until the middle of the eighteenth century.
Bigod Eggleston was a man with a mysterious name, mysterious origins, and a mysterious marital history.
The first funeral director in Windsor, James J, Merwin was known throughout the region for pioneering new methods and practices to advance his profession. Windsor Historical Society is fortunate to have three volumes of record books from the Merwin Funeral Home in its collection.
In continuing our Founders’ Series, we decided to examine the life of one of Windsor’s founding women. Studying women from this early period can be challenging, but Margaret Barrett Huntington Stoughton’s life, however, is surprisingly well-documented and full of quiet drama.
Handwritten entries in the Gillett-Holcomb Bible. This article originally appeared in the WHS Newsletter in September, 1990. The first part was written by then director Robert T. Silliman, and the second part by Raymond A. Beardslee, a former owner of the Bible.
"We want to know more," our visitors say, curious to learn more about Windsor's earliest settlers than the bare dates of their birth and death and the story of their arrival in the New [...]
The first of June was Census Day for the 1890 U.S. Federal Census, and within six weeks the Hartford Courant reported that there were 3,010 persons living in Windsor on that date. However, the unfortunate [...]