In the early 19th century, Hartford was inhabited by the Potawatomi and Menominee people, who had a trading post on the Rubicon River and a village on the eastern shore of Pike Lake.

[8] Some Native Americans remained in the area and were referred to as "strolling Potawatomi" in contemporary documents because many of them were migrants who subsisted by squatting on their ancestral lands, which were now owned by White settlers.

Later that year, German immigrant settlers John Thiel and Nicolaus Simon surveyed the Hartford area and determined that the Rubicon River would be a suitable location for a hydropowered mill.

[11] In 1846, a third Rossman brother, Charles, arrived in Hartford and constructed a gristmill to process grain grown by the settlers.

Many of the original settlers were Yankees from New England and were part of a wave of farmers who headed west in the early 1800s, though some other settlers—including Theil and Simon—were German immigrants.

The company's failure left the landowners with mortgages to pay off, creating a local crisis in which some families were forced to sell their farms.

For example, on August 25, 1861, a group of approximately a dozen Native Americans was living near Horicon Marsh, northwest of Hartford.

By the time the story reached Hartford on August 26, the dozen peaceful Native Americans had been transfigured into an army of 5,000 warriors preparing to massacre the settlers in the area.

Many able-bodied men in Hartford armed themselves, formed a war party, and set out to fight the Native Americans.

"[22] In the final decades of the 1800s and first years of the 1900s, Hartford's economy shifted from being a small market town serving the local farmers to being a larger industrial community.

The Kissel car factory, which was sold to the West Bend Aluminum Company in 1944, was retooled to make shell casings, rocket containers, affordable kitchenware and canisters for gas masks.

[17] In the summer of 1944, the U.S. military tried to fill labor shortages in the Hartford area by contracting German prisoners of war to work on pea farms.

The prisoners were contracted to work on farms as well as in canneries, hemp mills, dairy facilities and tanneries.

In 1990, the city annexed land from the neighboring Town of Rubicon in Dodge County to expand its industrial zone.

The Hartford post office contains an oil on canvas mural, Autumn Wisconsin Landscape, painted in 1940 by Ethel Spears.

These glacial movements created varied land formations such as kettles, lakes, hills, and kames that distinguish the region.

Lincoln Elementary School and the Silver Bell Motel both suffered roof and structural damage.

Other businesses included the Hartford Electric Company, a stone quarry, and a sand pit.

In 1906, Louis, his four sons, and US District Attorney H. K. Butterfield incorporated the Kissel Motor Car Company.

In 1906 Otto, along with John Liver, H. K. Butterfield, and 18 other members formed the First National Bank of Hartford, with capital of $50,000.

[37] In 1923 the Hartford Chamber of Commerce was organized with Otto Kissel, Henry Esser and John Liver as charter members.

Lincoln and Rossman Elementary Schools each serve roughly half of the city's kindergarten through fifth grade student population.