WATERBURY, a city in Newhaven county, Connecticut, United States, is situated on the Naugatuck river, 77 miles north-east of New York, at the junction of three railroads connecting it with Bridgeport, Hartford, and Meriden. It was settled by colonists from Hartford in 1677, and bore at first the Indian name of Mattatuck. The land, rocky and hilly, was poor for farming, and the inhabitants began to turn to manufacturing pursuits, in a humble way, before 1800. But the growth in population and business was very slow, till the civil war created such a demand for brass and manufactured articles of that metal that the small factories rapidly grew in number and size, and Waterbury has now become the centre of the brass industry in the United States. Its factories represent an outlay of 10 million dollars, and turn out a great quantity of sheet brass and copper, wire, and tubing, with a multitude of small articles—clocks, watches, lamps, pins, silver-plated ware, &c. The population, which is largely German and Irish, was 17,806 in 1880, and is now (1888) believed to approach 27,000. The city is well lighted by electric lights, and supplied with pure water from a spring-fed reservoir 6 miles distant. A free loan and reference library, founded in 1868, contains 42,000 volumes. Waterbury was incorporated as a city in 1853.