William Wadsworth was among the wealthier and more influential proprietors and settlers of Hartford. His house lot was nearly co-extensive with the square enclosed by Asylum, Trumbull, and West Pearl Streets, and the road by the river; which continued in the Wadsworth family until 1773, when it went into the hands of George and William Burr, who were relatives of the family.

William Wadsworth was one of the earliest inhabitants of Cambridge, Mass., residing on the westerly side of Holyoke St. near Harvard, and was a member of the first board of Selectmen in Feb. 1634-5. He probably came in the Lion as his name appears in a list of those who desired to be "transported to New England", dated 22 June 1632. (Drake's Founders of New England, p. 12). The Lion arrived in Boston 16 Sept. 1632 and many of her passengers settled in Cambridge. He was perhaps the same who was in Virginia coming with Daniel Gookin in the Flying Hart, 22 Nov 1621, aged 21 years. (Foregoing research by: LVSmall)

Research added after Mar 2008:

Ship: 1632, Lyon
The Lyon departed London June 22, 1632, with 123 passengers (including 50 children) and arrived at Boston September 16, 1632.
"They had been twelve weeks aboard and eight weeks from 'Land's End'."
(Winthrop's "Journal", I, 92)
William, the ancestor, accompanied Mr. Daniel Gookin to the Virginia Plantation in 1621, arriving in the ship "Flying Haste" Nov. 22nd of that year. In Hotten's List of Emigrants to America, 1600-1700, William Wadsworth is associated with Daniel Gookin and stands first on the list said to have come in the "Flying Haste." With Gookin, he took up his settlement at Newport News.

Four months after his arrival, March 22nd, 1622, came the sudden attack by the Indians upon the plantation in which three hundred and forty-nine of the colonists were massacred. Gookin, along with his followers, some thirty-five in all, would not obey the order of the council to abandon the outlying posts, but "thought himself sufficient against what could happen, and so did to his great credit and the content of his adventures." William appears to have returned with Gookin to England in the "Sea Flower" in July 1622. (Smith's History of Virginia, vol II, pg 76)

In 1632, William again started for the new world, this time in the ship "Lion," which reached Boston on Sept. 16, 1632. He settled in Cambridge with the Rev. Thomas Hooker's company, and on Nov. 6th, took the oath of a freeman. He was one of the first selectmen of Cambridge, and in 1636 was one of Hooker's company of one hundred, of both sexes and all ages, who traveled over a hundred miles through a trackless wilderness to found the city of Hartford. They carried no guide but the compass. According to Trumbull they drove with them one hundred and sixty head of cattle and by the way subsisted on the milk of their cows. Making their way through swamps, over hills, and through dense woods, they were nearly a fortnight upon the journey. (250 Years of the Wadsworth Family in America, by Horace Andrew Wadsworth, pg 257)

.... William was about forty-one years at this time, he having been born in 1(5)95. Little is known of his first wife, but it is probable that he married in England, as he possessed a house and home soon after he settled at Cambridge. By her, he had four children. He married (2) Elizabeth, clan of Rev. Samuel Stone of Hartford, in 1644. By her, he had six children, including Capt. Joseph. His wife Elizabeth, according to an old record, died in 1659. William resided in Hartford till his death in 1675 when eighty years old. Savage says of him, "He seems to have lived in the highest esteem; no man more often chosen representative, for between Oct., 1656, and May, 1675, hardly a year misses his services." It was his son, Capt. Joseph, who saved the liberties of Connecticut by carrying away and concealing in the hollow of an oak the Connecticut charter. Gen. James S. Wadsworth, the distinguished division commander who was killed in the Battle of the Wilderness, was a descendant in the sixth generation from William. (History of Connecticutt, vol I, pg 64-65)

William made his first trip to America in November 1621. " Came this day to Newport News … in the Flying Harte." He sailed with a man who shipped cattle and goats from England and Ireland to the Virginia colony. "On March 22, 1622, the Powhatan Indians of Virginia massacred 350 white colonists in and around Jamestown. Tired of the relentless assaults perpetrated by English settlers and worried about the colony's growth, Powhatan chief Opechancanough hoped that killing one quarter of Virginia's colonists would put an end to the European threat." William left Virginia later that year. He came again to New England on the "Lyon", arriving in Sept. 1632 with his first wife Sarah Talcott and four children. They were some of the earliest inhabitants of Newtown (now Cambridge), MA. William was a member of the first board of Selectmen, in Feb. 1634-5. In 1636 the Wadsworths and a group of one hundred men, women and children, left Newtown to form a new settlement on the Connecticut River later known as Hartford, CT. Their house lot in Hartford was nearly co-extensive with the square enclosed by Asylum, Trumbull, and West Pearl Streets. William's first wife (Sarah) died and he married Elizabeth Stone in 1645. Her brother was the Reverend Samuel Stone.

" [William's] life from the time he settled in Hartford was busy, though uneventful. The town records show that he was a selectman, townsman and constable between 1638-9, when the Fundamental Orders were adopted, and 1656, and that he was a deputy at almost every session of the General Court from that year up to the day of his death."
(Wadsworth Family History, pub: Lawrence, Mass, 1883