Tolland County

Tolland County was created by the Connecticut General Assembly in 1785, and Tolland — named in 1715, incorporated in 1722 — became its county seat; the Old Tolland County Court House of 1822 still stands on the green, and the county jail's 1856 cellblock remained in use until 1968. Many of the towns around it were set off from older neighbors: Ellington from East Windsor in 1786, Columbia from Lebanon in 1804, Vernon from Bolton in 1808, Andover from Hebron and Coventry in 1848. Somers was incorporated by Massachusetts in 1734 and annexed to Connecticut in 1749. Water power ran the nineteenth century here — woolen mills at Rockville in Vernon, the West Willington Glass Works, Stafford's textile mills after its mineral-springs trade faded, grist and paper mills at Columbia. Schools founded in the county outgrew it: Eleazar Wheelock's Moor's Charity School in Columbia moved to Hanover, New Hampshire and became Dartmouth College, and the Storrs brothers' 1881 gift of land in Mansfield grew into the University of Connecticut.