Berlin, Connecticut

BERLIN , CONNECTICUT Home of the Yankee peddler B erlin is a town of approximately 20,000 in Hartford County, Connecticut. The area that became Berlin was originally settled in 1659, when Sergeant Richard Beckley purchased 300 acres from Chief Tarramuggus, a Sachem of the Wongunks tribe. Other families slowly followed, and in 1686, Captain Richard Seymour led a group of families from Farmington to begin the first settlement on Christian Lane. Around 1740, Edward and William Pattison, two brothers from Ireland, immigrated to Berlin and set up the first tinware business in the colonies. For twenty years, until 1760, they kept their work in the family, selling their wares from a basket. When demand increased, they took apprentices into the shop and engaged peddlers to travel throughout the colonies selling the shiny, useful articles. Indeed, the seal of the Town of Berlin shows such a “Yankee peddler” in eighteenth-century dress with a basket under his arm, and a pack on his back full of tinware. Wares were peddled from house to house, AT A GLANCE BERLIN, CONNECTICUT WHAT: A town of 20,000 WHERE: In Hartford County, in the middle of the state WEBSITE: www.town.berlin.ct.us