Windsor is the home of numerous historical organizations, historic sites, historic cemeteries, and dozens of colonial-era houses, as well as the Oliver Ellsworth Homestead.
“ConnecticutHistory.org, a program of Connecticut Humanities, describes Windsor as follows:
Windsor, the state’s first English settlement, is located in the northern portion of Hartford County where the Farmington and Connecticut Rivers join. This confluence made the area valuable, as a trade corridor, farmland, and hunting grounds, to the indigenous populations and also to the Europeans who settled there in 1633. Early Windsor served as a port active in West Indies trade. During the 19th century, paper, wool, and cotton mills flourished in its Poquonock section, but it was tobacco farming and brickmaking that dominated its economy from the mid-1600s well into the 1900s. Windsor today is known for diverse corporate and technological enterprises, the Loomis Chaffee School, and its “first town” history.
Historic District
The Homestead is located on Palisado Avenue, just north of the extensive Palisado Avenue Historic District. This District incorporates the Windsor Historical Society, and numerous buildings dating from the Colonial era to the present. For more details, see the link, below for the National Register of Historic Places – Inventory. https://npgallery.nps.gov/pdfhost/docs/NRHP/Text/87000799.pdf
Windsor Historical Society
We encourage visitors to plan a visit to the Windsor Historical Society when they tour the Oliver Ellsworth Homestead. For more information, visit their website at http://windsorhistoricalsociety.org
The Windsor Historical Society, founded in 1921, invites visitors to explore the people, places, and events that have shaped Windsor for over four centuries. The Society’s museum includes changing and permanent exhibition galleries; a hands-on history learning center for families; a research library and manuscript collection housing Windsor photographs, documents, ephemera, and genealogical materials, a museum shop and two historic houses open to the public — the 1758 Strong-Howard House and the 1767 Dr. Hezekiah Chaffee House. The Society is located at 96 Palisado Avenue (Route 159) and is open from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., Wednesday through Saturday. Tours of its two historic homes are offered at 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. General admission to the library and historic houses is $8 for adults, $6 for seniors and students and free to children under 12 and WHS members.
When you plan your visit to the Oliver Ellsworth Homestead, make sure to check out all that Windsor has to offer.
Please check out the other historic sites and organizations in Windsor.
The Connecticut Valley Agricultural Museum
https://www.tobaccohistsoc.org
Vintage Radio and Communications Museum
Documents
Barber, John Warner. “Map: Plan of the Ancient Palisado Plot in Windsor,” 1835. Connecticut History Online, Connecticut Historical Society. Link.
Pease, Seth. “Map: Map of Windsor, Shewing the Parishes, the Roads, and Houses – True Copy of the Original Map Made by Seth Pease of Suffield, 1798.” Windsor, CT, 1906. Connecticut Historical Society. Link.