Hartford | |
City in the United States | |
Location | |
State | Connecticut |
County | Hartford County |
Coordinates | 41°45’48″N, 72°41’6″WL |
General | |
Surface | 46.8 km² |
– country | 45.1 km² |
– water | 1.7 km² |
Residents (April 1, 2020) |
121,054 (2690 inhabitant/km²) |
Politics | |
Mayor | Luke Bronin (D) |
Website | hartford.gov |
According to ehuacom, Hartford is the capital of the US state of Connecticut. It is located on the Connecticut River in the middle of the state.
The city itself has a population of 121,578 (2000 census), but with Hartford’s extensive suburbs, the entire Hartford metropolitan area reaches a population of 1,183,110 (2000). The city of Hartford is Connecticut’s third-largest city (after Bridgeport and New Haven). In 1930 the monument building A. Everett Austin House was completed there.
Hartford is the “insurance capital” of the United States – a number of major insurance companies have their headquarters there.
History
Dutch and English period
After Dutch explorer Adriaen Block explored the area in 1614, fur traders from the colony of New Netherland established a trading post at the site in 1623, which the local Indians called Suckiaug. The name of the trading post was ” Huys de Hoop “. In 1633 the post was further expanded into a small fortress by adding a blockhouse and wooden defenses, while a small garrison of soldiers with a few cannons arrived from New Amsterdam.
The first English settlers arrived in 1636. Thomas Hooker led a group of 100 settlers from Cambridge in Massachusetts, then called Newtowne. They settled on the north side of the Dutch fort. The English settlers called the settlement Newtowne at first, but in 1637 they changed the name Hartford to the English town of Hertford. The Dutch took no steps to stop the English influx. The Huys de Hoop remained an outpost and increasingly came under the English sphere of influence. Governor of New Netherland Peter Stuyvesantnegotiated with English envoys in 1650 about a permanent border between the Dutch and English colonies, and they agreed that the border would be some 80 kilometers west of Huys de Hoop and the Versche Rivier (now: Connecticut River). With this, the Dutch left Connecticut for good. The Hartford neighborhood where this fort once stood is still known as Dutch Point.
In addition, the following also remind us of the Dutch presence: Huyshope Avenue, Van Block Avenue, Van Dyke Avenue (named after Gijsbert Van Dijk, the first commander of Huys de Hoop), Hendrixsen Avenue (Cornelius Hendrixsen, lieutenant on the ship ‘De Onrust ‘ by Adriaen Block), Vredendaal Avenue (estate of skipper and explorer de Vries who visited Huys de Hoop in June 1639; he found only 15 soldiers there). In 1662, King Charles II of England, through a charter, legitimized the colony’s existence, defined its borders and gave the colonists a high degree of self-government.
History of Hartford as an insurance city [ edit | edit source text ]
In the 18th century, Hartford grew into a major river port, with thriving trade with England, the Caribbean and even the Far East. River captains often made arrangements to share the risks of the long voyages. These informal arrangements were the beginning of the insurance business in Hartford. It started with marine insurance, but quickly expanded to many other forms of insurance, such as fire insurance. In 1810, the first insurance company, the Hartford Fire Insurance Company, was founded. The foundation of the Aetna Fire Insurance Companyfollowed nine years later. Hartford’s reputation as a reliable insurance center was only really established after the disastrous New York fires of 1835 and 1845, when Hartford insurance companies kept their payment promises while many other companies failed to pay.
The first life insurance policies were offered in 1846. In the same year, the Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance Company of Hartford was founded.
According to the Connecticut state government, there are currently 106 insurance companies located in the state, most of them in Hartford and the surrounding area.
Demographics
9.5% of the population is older than 65 and 33.2% consists of single -person households. Unemployment is 4.8 % (census figures 2000).
About 40.5% of Hartford’s population are Hispanics and Hispanics, 38.1% are of African origin and 1.6% of Asian origin.
The population decreased from 137,289 in 1990 to 121,578 in 2000.
Climate
In January the average temperature is -4.1 °C, in July it is 23.2 °C. Annual average rainfall is 1121.2 mm (data based on the measurement period 1961-1990).
Cities Partnering
Hartford has twinning links with:
- Bydgoszcz (Poland)
- Caguas (Puerto Rico)
- Dongguan (China)
- Florida (Italy)
- Freetown (Sierra Leone)
- Hertford (United Kingdom)
- Mangualde (Portugal)
- Morant Bay (Jamaica)
- New Ross (Ireland)
- Ocotal (Nicaragua)
- Thessaloniki (Greece)
Nearby places
The figure below shows nearby incorporated and census-designated sites within a 10 mile radius of Hartford.
Hartford
Blue Hills (5 km)
Central Manchester (14 km)
East Hartford (6 km)
Glastonbury Center (10 km)
Kensington (16 km)
New Britain (13 km)
Newington (9 miles)
Simsbury Center (16 km)
Weatherogue (14 km)
West Hartford (5 km)
Wethersfield (7 miles)
Born in Hartford
- Samuel Colt (1814–1862), entrepreneur and inventor
- Frederic Edwin Church (1826-1900), painter
- John Pierpont Morgan (1837-1913), banker and art collector
- Barbara McClintock (1902-1992), botanist and Nobel laureate (1983)
- Katharine Hepburn (1907-2003), actress
- Roger Sperry (1913-1994), neuropsychologist and Nobel laureate (1981)
- Gary Merrill (1915-1990), actor
- Walter Bolden (1925-2002), drummer
- Joe Porcaro (1930-2020), jazz drummer and percussionist
- Emil Richards (1932-2019), percussionist
- Lois Fisher-Dietzel (1940), policymaker, journalist and writer
- Gene Pitney (1940-2006), singer
- Paul Bremer (1941), diplomat
- Linda Evans (1942), actress
- Sherwood Spring (1944), astronaut
- Bill Rodgers (1947), long-distance runner
- Diane Venora (1952), actress
- Katherine Cannon (1953), actress
- Jeff Porcaro (1954-1992), co-founder and drummer of Toto
- Mike Porcaro (1955-2015), bassist for Toto
- Steve Porcaro (1957), singer and keyboardist of Toto
- Wayne Bergeron (1958), jazz trumpeter
- Suzanne Collins (1962), author of the Hunger Games trilogy, among others
- Christine Leunens (1964), Belgian model and writer
- Steve Potts, British footballer
- David Alan Basche (1968), actor
- Stephenie Meyer (1973), author of, among others, the Twilight trilogy
- Will Friedle (1976), actor, comedian
- Josh Evans (1985), jazz trumpeter
- Zachary Donohue (1991), figure skater
- Andrea Kneppers (1993), Dutch swimmer
- Natalia Kelly (1994), Austrian singer
- Kathleen Kucka, artist