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In 1633 the Dutch erected a trading post, House of Hope (1633), on the elevated ground at the junction of the Park and Connecticut Rivers, on land purchased from the Pequots.  Two years later, English colonists bought land from local Indians to establish their settlement, originally called Newtown, later changed to Hartford in 1637.  In 1783, East Hartford was created.  In 1854 the area known as the West Division of Hartford separated to form West Hartford. 

Native Place Names

• Pagonchaumischaug (“fishing place near the bare hill”) was a parcel of land sold by Massecup of Hartford to Jonathan Gilbert.  JT/CPN
• “Pequot Head” is the strip of land between the Suckiog fort and the House of Hope (presently Brainard Field), where, during the Pequot War, were displayed on a pole scalps of Pequots.  CPN
• Peseponk (“they are sweating”) is the location for Suckiog sweat lodges near Rocky Hill Brook.  CPN
• Poke (“bare or cleared land”) was a hill west of the road to Wethersfield, a little northeast of Folly Bridge.  CPN
• Suckiog (“black or dark colored soil”) was the land in the Harford Meadows along the Connecticut River the Pequots sold to the Dutch in 1633.  It became the location for the House of Hope.  Called Sickajoock in Dutch, it was the Indian name for Hartford.  CPN
• “Soldiers’ Field” was, at most, twenty-eight acres of land granted to twenty-nine English Pequot War veterans.  It was the previous location of a Suckiog village.  CPN

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