The town of Somers is situated in the northwestern portion of Tolland county. The western section of the town is genreally smooth and level, and free from stones. The eastern section contains some hills of considerable elevation, affording an extensive and interesting prospect of Hartford and the beautiful valley of the Connecticut. The town is bounded on the north by the Massachusetts line, west by Enfield, east by Stafford and south by Ellington. It is about six miles in length from north to south, with a mean breadth of about five miles. The central part of the town is twenty-two miles northeast from Hartford and twelve southest from Springfield.
The town of Somers was the southeast part of that still more ancient town, Springfield. It was granted by the general court of Massachusetts to Mr. Pyncheon and his company. It was afterward incorporated witht the town of Enfield, and was the same ecclesiastical society in part, and so continued until 1726, when it was made a distinct ecclesiastical society by the general court of Massachusetts, and then took the name of East Enfield society. The town of Enfield, when incorporated, extended from the Connecticut river to Stafford, ten miles.
The first person who settled in Somers was a Welshman, benjamin Jones by name, who came from Enfield to this place, Somers. He took up his abode at the foot of the mountain, on the principal road which passed through the town from Enfield to Stafford.
Enfield, including Somers, belonged to the Indian chief, Totatuck, and his tribe, who, for 25 lbs sterling, sold their lands to the first settlers of the town, reserving the right of hunting and fishing in the whole town. Somers remained under the jurisdiction of Massachusetts till aboiut 1750. About the year 1724 it was formed into a society by the name of East Enfield, and was made a town in 1734.
The earliest records of the town date some twenty years after its first settlement, and that may account somewhat for the loss of its first origin. The first birth of a white child recorded in the town was in 1725, yet tradition assigns one Benjamin Thomas as being the first. His father lived three-fourths of a mile north-east of the cemetery. Benjamin is said to have made the first apple cider made in Somers.
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