The Connecticut Colony, originally known as the Connecticut River Colony, was an English colony in New England which later became the state of Connecticut. It was organized on March 3, 1636, as a settlement for a Puritan congregation of settlers from the Massachusetts Bay Colony led by Thomas Hooker. The English would secure their control of the region in the Pequot War. Over the course of the colony's history it would absorb the neighboring New Haven and Saybrook colonies. The colony was part of the briefly-lived Dominion of New England. The colony's founding document, the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut has been called the first written constitution of a democratic government, earning Connecticut the nickname "The Constitution State."[2]
Prior to European settlement, the land that would become Connecticut was home to the Wappinger Confederacy along the western coast and the Niantics on the eastern coast. Further inland were the Pequot, who pushed the Niantic to the coast and would become the most important tribe in relations with colonists. Also present were the Nipmunks and Mohicans, though these two tribes largely lived in the neighboring states of Massachusetts and New York respectively.[3] The first European to visit Connecticut was Dutch explorer Adriaen Block, who sailed up the Connecticut River with his yacht Onrust.[4][5] Accordingly, as the first Europeans to explore Connecticut, the Dutch claimed the land as part of New Netherland and negotiated a land purchase of 20 acres along the river from Wopigwooit, the Grand Sachem of the Pequot in 1633. The Dutch would establish a trading post named Kivett's Point and a redoubt named Fort Good Hope, the future sites of Saybrook and Hartford respectively.[6][7][8]
English settlement
In 1631, a group of sachems from the Connecticut valley led by Wahquimacut visited Plymouth Colony and Boston, asking both colonies to send settlers to Connecticut to fight the Pequot. Massachusetts governor John Winthrop rejected the proposal but Edward Winslow, governor of Plymouth was more open, traveling to Connecticut in person in 1632.[9] Winslow, along with William Bradford would later travel to Boston to convince the leaders of Massachusetts Bay to join Plymouth in constructing a trading post on the Connecticut River before the Dutch could. Winthrop rejected the offer, calling Connecticut "not fit to meddle with" citing hostile Indians and the difficulty of moving large ships into the Connecticut River.[10][11][12]
Despite the Bay Colony's refusal to join the venture, Plymouth sent a bark led by William Holmes to establish a trading post on the Connecticut. Besides the English settlers, they took some of the original sachems of the area to prove the validity of their claim. As they passed Fort Good Hope they were threatened by the Dutch, a threat ignored by Holmes. Holmes proceeded a few miles up river and constructed a trading post on the modern site of Windsor.[13][14] Hearing of the English activities, New Netherland governor Wouter Van Twiller dispatched 70 men to dislodge the English. The Dutch would find the English well prepared to defend themselves and left, seeking to avoid bloodshed.[15] Meanwhile, John Oldham led a group of men from the Bay Colony to the river to see Connecticut for themselves. They returned with accounts of plentiful beaver, hemp, and graphite. A year later, Oldham would lead a group of settlers to found the town of Wethersfield.[13][16]
By 1635, Massachusetts' English population had grown immensely and it was clear there was not enough land for the settlers. Particularly eager to leave the crowded Bay colony were the residents of Newtown. The founder of Newtown, Thomas Dudley was frequently at odds with Winthrop, including anger at the choice of Boston as the colony's capital and refusal to support the construction of a fort in Boston.[17] Dudley sent one Thomas Hooker, Newtown's pastor to Boston to resolve the latter dispute, but the resentment of Winthrop remained.[18][19] After Dudley replaced Winthrop as governor in May 1634, the issue of Hooker's congregation's desire for removal to Connecticut was raised in the General Court. Opponents of the removal countered with a proposal that settlers instead settle Agawam and Merrimack. Both sites proved unsatisfactory, but removal was nonetheless delayed for two years.[20][21]
Thomas Hooker and his people traveling
Despite the refusal of Thomas Hooker's request for removal, settlers continued to pour into the valley. In May 1635 the Saybrook Colony was established at the mouth of the Connecticut River.[22] Considerable amounts of emigrants from Massachusetts also settled in the recently established town of Wethersfield.[23] Plymouth's settlement of Windsor also found itself swamped by settlers from Dorchester who took over the settlement. The issue was resolved when the Dorchester settlers agreed to pay the Plymouth settlers for the land appropriated.[24] Finally in 1636 the arrival of a new group of settlers allowed Hooker's congregation to sell their homes and set off on the journey to Connecticut on the May 31.[25]
Hooker's group of around a hundred settlers and as many cattle soon arrived at the Connecticut River and established the town of Newtown near the Dutch fort. This name would not last however, as it was soon renamed Hartford after Hertford, the hometown of settler Samuel Stone.[26] In May 1638 Thomas Hooker delivered a sermon on civil government. Inspired by this sermon the settlers sought to create a constitution for the colony. The resulting document, the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, was likely mostly drafted by Roger Ludlow, the only trained lawyer in the colonies. The document was adopted in January 1639 and formally united the settlements of Hartford, Windsor, and Wetherfield together and has been called the first written democratic constitution.[2][27][28] Under the new constitution, John Haynes was elected governor with Ludlow as deputy governor. Owing to a restriction against governors seeking office in consecutive years, Haynes would alternate the office of governor with Edward Hopkins every year until 1655.[29] Shortly after the Fundamental Orders were established, the nearby New Haven colony organized its own government.[30]
When Fort Good Hope was constructed, the Dutch specified in their treaty with the Pequot that the trading post was to be open to all tribes. Ignoring this, the Pequot attacked a rival tribe attempting to trade. The Dutch retaliated by kidnapping the sachem of the Pequot, Tatobem and holding him for ransom. After the Pequot paid the ransom, the Dutch gave them Tatobem's corpse. The Pequot retaliated for this by attacking an English ship, believing it to be Dutch. The ship's captain, John Stone, and his crew were killed by the Pequot.[31] A Pequot envoy was sent to Massachusetts to explain the misunderstanding. The envoy told the English about the mistaken identity of the ship. When asked to turn over the killers, the envoy claimed all but two of the killers had died of a recent smallpox epidemic and they lacked the authority to turn over the two survivors. The Pequot further claimed the killing was justified as Stone had captured two Pequots and mistreated them.[32] When John Gallup was sailing to Long Island he spotted a pinnace belonging to John Oldham, its deck covered with Indians. When Gallup attempted to board the ship to investigate, a fight ensued with Gallup victorious. The colonists blamed the Narragansett for the killing, warning Roger Williams to be careful. The Narragansett leaders Canonicus and Miantonomoh were able to reassure the colonist, claiming that the culprits not killed by Gallup were hiding among the Pequot.[33]
Depiction of the attack on Fort Mystic
After this a group of ninety men led by John Endecott and his captains John Underhill and Nathaniel Turner was sent from Massachusetts to the Pequot's territory to demand the return of the murderers of both Stone and Oldham. The force first sailed to Block Island, but the Indians evaded them there and the force left with the only casualty inflicted on the villagers being the burning of the island's empty villages.[34] When the forced arrived in Pequot territory, they were told that the murder was committed by none other than Sassacus, grand sachem of the Pequot. The Pequot also claimed to be unable to distinguish the Dutch from the English. Disbelieving these claims and seeing there were no women or children among the Pequot, Endecott attacked, beginning the war.[35] The Pequot responded by besieging Saybrook and attacking Wethersfield, where they would kill nine and take two women hostage.[36] The women were daughters of William Swaine and would later be rescued by the Dutch.[37]
Connecticut sent a force of ninety men, led by John Mason. The force was joined by sixty Mohegans led by Uncas and came to Saybrook where a group of Massachusetts men led by Underhill joined them. On May 26, 1637, the group, encamped outside a fortified Pequot village on the Mystic River, launched a surprise attack at dawn. The English charged into the village, set it on fire, and formed a ring around the stockades to kill anyone attempting to escape. The Indian allies formed a second ring to catch anyone who managed to escape the first. Hundreds of Pequots died, many of the women and children.[38]
Their spirits broken, many of the Pequot attempted to flee west. Mason, accompanied by Israel Stoughton pursued a group of three hundred Pequots to a swamp near modern Fairfield, where they killed and captured a great number of them. Sassacus was able to escape to the Mohawks, who immediately killed him and his party, sending his scalp to Boston.[39][40] With the Pequots vanquished the Treaty of Hartford was signed between Connecticut, the Mohegans, and the Narragansett, granting the Connecticut settlers the exclusive right to the former Pequot land and dissolving the Pequot as both a political and cultural entity, with surviving Pequots made to assimilate into the other tribes.[41]
Consolidating the colony
Governor John Winthrop Jr.
With the outbreak of the English Civil War, English support for the Saybrook Colony dried up. The colony's governor, George Fenwick negotiated a deal to sell the colony to Connecticut in 1644.[42] Fenwick would return to England and serve with distinction under Oliver Cromwell.[43] Inspired by the successes of colonial cooperation during the Pequot War, Connecticut, along with Massachusetts, Plymouth, and New Haven formed the New England Confederation to mutually defend the colonies against the Dutch, French, and Indians.[44][45] Before leaving for England, Fenwick, along with Hopkins, would serve as Connecticut's first commissioners to the Confederation.[46] Connecticut's membership in the Confederation also meant it sent troops to fight in King Philip's War, though Connecticut itself was minimally impacted.[47]
Like its fellow Puritan colonies, Connecticut would welcome Cromwell's victory in the civil war. The new English government, however, would soon cause issues for Connecticut. The Confederation negotiated the Treaty of Hartford defining the border between New Netherland and the English colonies, but the government in England refused to ratify it.[48] Tensions with the Dutch would be inflamed by the Navigation Act 1651, restricting foreign trade with the colonies. These tensions would culminate in the First Anglo-Dutch War.[49] The war's outbreak enabled Connecticut to seize Fort Good Hope in 1653.[50]
After the restoration of the Stuart monarchy, many in Connecticut feared their colony's Puritanism and lack of a royal charter would lead to Charles II curtailing the colony's self government. Governor John Winthrop Jr. was sent to England in 1662 where he successfully obtained a charter. The charter granted Connecticut extensive liberties, with the removal of references to royalty being the only change required in the aftermath of the American Revolution.[51] The charter also granted Connecticut extensive land claims, defining its borders as the Narragansett Bay, the Pacific Ocean, the southern border of Massachusetts and the 40th parallel north.[52] When representatives of Connecticut traveled to New Haven to show them that they were to be annexed into Connecticut, they initially met strong opposition. This opposition faded in 1664 when New Netherland was seized and renamed New York after its proprietor, the Roman CatholicDuke of York. New York's eastern boundary was defined as the Connecticut River, making New Haven within the claims of both New York and Connecticut. Unwilling to be ruled by a Catholic royalist, New Haven relented and agreed to join Connecticut.[53] The aforementioned seizure of New Netherland would also end Connecticut's claims on Long Island, as when Captain John Scott took the island he claimed it not for Connecticut but for himself.[52]
Dominion of New England
Hiding the charter in the oak
The Duke of York would ascend to the throne as King James II and VII. As one of his first acts, he would consolidate the English colonies from West Jersey to Maine into the Dominion of New England. Sir Edmund Andros would be appointed governor of the new united colony. Andros demanded that Connecticut hand over its charter as it was no longer a separate colony. Governor Robert Treat attempted to delay handing over the charter for several months, but on October 31, 1687, Andros came to Hartford to retrieve the charter in person. Treat proceeded to give a speech well into the evening on the importance of the charter. Suddenly, a strong gust of wind came through the door, blowing out the candles. By the time the candles were relit, the charter had vanished, safely hidden away in a nearby oak tree.[54] The tree, which became known as the Charter Oak would endure as a symbol of Connecticut for generations.[55] Andros replaced Puritan officials with Anglicans and imposed heavy taxes. His salary of £1,200 exceeded the entire annual expenditure of Massachusetts' former government. When James II was overthrown in the Glorious Revolution, Andros initially attempted to suppress the news. Word did get out, and the colonists overthrew the dominion casting its government as crypto-Catholic supports of James II and themselves as loyal to the new Protestant monarchs of William III and Mary II. The dominion's short-lived experiment in centralized government ended and Connecticut, along with all the other colonies, had its charter restored.[56]
In 1701 New Haven was designated co-capital with Hartford. At the first legislative session in New Haven to create a college for the colony, with Saybrook as the site and Abraham Pierson as the first rector. Pierson would run the college from his home in Killingworth until his death in 1707, when it was finally moved to Saybrook. Saybrook would soon prove to be too remote and New Haven was able to beat out other communities for the site of the college in 1716. Two years later, when Elihu Yale made a significant donation to the college, it was renamed Yale College in his honor.[57]
The Connecticut Courant, the oldest continuously published newspaper in the United States, was founded in Hartford in 1764.[58]
Connecticut was a staunch supporter of the American Revolution, with a fifth of the state's male population serving in the war. Jonathan Trumbull was the only colonial governor to support the patriots. Nathan Hale, the first American spy, also hailed from the colony.[59]
Religion
The original colonies along the Connecticut River and in New Haven were established by separatist Puritans who were connected with the Massachusetts and Plymouth colonies. They held Calvinist religious beliefs similar to the English Puritans, but they maintained that their congregations needed to be separated from the English state church. They had immigrated to New England during the Great Migration. In the middle of the 18th century, the government restricted voting rights with a property qualification and a church membership requirement.[60] Congregationalism was the established church in the colony by the time of the American War of Independence until it was disestablished in 1818.[61]
The economy began with subsistence farming in the 17th century and developed with greater diversity and an increased focus on production for distant markets, especially the British colonies in the Caribbean. The American Revolution cut off imports from Britain and stimulated a manufacturing sector that made heavy use of the entrepreneurship and mechanical skills of the people. In the second half of the 18th century, difficulties arose from the shortage of good farmland, periodic money problems, and downward price pressures in the export market. In agriculture, there was a shift from grain to animal products.[65] The colonial government attempted to promote various commodities as export items from time to time, such as hemp, potash, and lumber, in order to bolster its economy and improve its balance of trade with Great Britain.[66]
Connecticut's domestic architecture included a wide variety of house forms. They generally reflected the dominant English heritage and architectural tradition.[67]
The United Colonies of New England, commonly known as the New England Confederation, was a confederal alliance of the New England colonies of Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, Saybrook (Connecticut), and New Haven formed in May 1643. Its primary purpose was to unite the Puritan colonies in support of the church, and for defense against the Native Americans and the Dutch colony of New Netherland. It was the first milestone on the long road to colonial unity and was established as a direct result of a war that started between the Mohegan and Narragansett Native American peoples. Its charter provided for the return of fugitive criminals and indentured servants, and served as a forum for resolving inter-colonial disputes. In practice, none of the goals were accomplished.
The Massachusetts Bay Colony (1628–1691), more formally the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, was an English settlement on the east coast of North America around the Massachusetts Bay, one of the several colonies later reorganized as the Province of Massachusetts Bay. The lands of the settlement were in southern New England, with initial settlements on two natural harbors and surrounding land about 15.4 miles (24.8 km) apart—the areas around Salem and Boston, north of the previously established Plymouth Colony. The territory nominally administered by the Massachusetts Bay Colony covered much of central New England, including portions of Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, and Connecticut.
Theophilus Eaton was a wealthy New England Puritan merchant, diplomat and financier, who took part in organizing and financing the Great Puritan Migration to America. He was a founder of Massachusetts Bay Colony, and a founder and eventual governor of New Haven Colony. He also cofounded Boston, Massachusetts, Greenwich, Connecticut and Eaton's Neck in New York.
New Haven Colony was an English colony from 1638 to 1664 that included settlements on the north shore of Long Island Sound, with outposts in modern-day New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. The colony joined Connecticut Colony in 1664.
John Underhill was an early English settler and soldier in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the Province of New Hampshire, where he also served as governor; the New Haven Colony, New Netherland, and later the Province of New York, settling on Long Island. Hired to train militia in New England, he is most noted for leading colonial militia in the Pequot War (1636–1637) and Kieft's War which the colonists mounted against two different groups of Native Americans. He also published an account of the Pequot War.
The Pequot War was an armed conflict that took place in 1636 and ended in 1638 in New England, between the Pequot tribe and an alliance of the colonists from the Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, and Saybrook colonies and their allies from the Narragansett and Mohegan tribes. The war concluded with the decisive defeat of the Pequot. At the end, about 700 Pequots had been killed or taken into captivity. Hundreds of prisoners were sold into slavery to colonists in Bermuda or the West Indies; other survivors were dispersed as captives to the victorious tribes.
The U.S. state of Connecticut began as three distinct settlements of Puritans from Massachusetts and England; they combined under a single royal charter in 1663. Known as the "land of steady habits" for its political, social and religious conservatism, the colony prospered from the trade and farming of its ethnic English Protestant population. The Congregational and Unitarian churches became prominent here. Connecticut played an active role in the American Revolution, and became a bastion of the conservative, business-oriented, Constitutionalism Federalist Party.
John Haynes, also sometimes spelled Haines, was a colonial magistrate and one of the founders of the Connecticut Colony. He served one term as governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and was the first governor of Connecticut, ultimately serving eight separate terms. Although Colonial Connecticut prohibited Governors from serving consecutive terms at the time, "John Haynes was so popular with the colonists that he served alternately as governor and often as deputy governor from 1639 to his death in 1653."
Roger Ludlow (1590–1664) was an English lawyer, magistrate, military officer, and colonist. He was active in the founding of the Colony of Connecticut, and helped draft laws for it and the nearby Massachusetts Bay Colony. Under his and John Mason's direction, Boston's first fortification, later known as Castle William and then Fort Independence was built on Castle Island in Boston harbor. Frequently at odds with his peers, he eventually also founded Fairfield and Norwalk before leaving New England entirely.
John Winthrop the Younger FRS was an English politician and scientist. An early governor of the Connecticut Colony, he played a large role in the unification of the colony's settlements into a singular colony and obtaining a royal charter for the colony.
John Mason was an English-born settler, soldier, commander and Deputy Governor of the Connecticut Colony. Mason was best known for leading a group of Puritan settlers and Indian allies on a combined attack on a Pequot Fort in an event known as the Mystic Massacre. The destruction and loss of life he oversaw effectively ended the hegemony of the Pequot tribe in southeast Connecticut.
The Saybrook Colony was a short-lived English colony established in New England in 1635 at the mouth of the Connecticut River in what is today Old Saybrook, Connecticut. Saybrook was founded by a group of Puritan noblemen as a potential political refuge from the personal rule of Charles I. They claimed possession of the land via a deed of conveyance from Robert Rich, 2nd Earl of Warwick, which granted the colony the land from the Narragansett Bay to the Pacific Ocean. Saybrook was named in honor of two of its primary investors, the Lords Saye and Sele and Brooke. John Winthrop the Younger was contracted as the colony's first governor, but quickly left Saybrook after failing to enforce its authority over Connecticut's settlers. With Winthrop gone, Lion Gardiner was left in charge of Saybrook's considerable fort, defending it when it was besieged during the Pequot War. Governor George Fenwick arrived in the colony in 1639, but quickly saw it as a lost cause. Fenwick negotiated the colony's sale to Connecticut in 1644 after interest in colonization dried up due to the investors' involvement in the English Civil War.
Edward Hopkins was an English colonist and politician and 2nd Governor of the Connecticut Colony. Active on both sides of the Atlantic, he was a founder of the New Haven and Connecticut colonies, serving seven one-year terms as Governor of Connecticut. He returned to England in the 1650s, where he was politically active in the administration of Oliver Cromwell as a Lord Commissioner of the Admiralty and member of Parliament. He remained in England despite being elected Governor of Connecticut in 1655, and died in London in 1657.
House of Hope, also known as Fort Good Hope, was a redoubt and factory in the seventeenth-century Dutch colony of New Netherland. The trading post was located at modern-day Hartford, Connecticut at Park River), a tributary river of the Fresh River. The location of this confluence of rivers is at contemporary Sheldon Street. The fort is recalled today with a nearby avenue called Huyshope, once the center of economic activity in the city.
The New England Colonies of British America included Connecticut Colony, the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Massachusetts Bay Colony, Plymouth Colony, and the Province of New Hampshire, as well as a few smaller short-lived colonies. The New England colonies were part of the Thirteen Colonies and eventually became five of the six states in New England, with Plymouth Colony absorbed into Massachusetts and Maine separating from it.
William Parker (1618–1686) was an early Puritan settler in the Connecticut Colony and one of the founders of Hartford. He arrived in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the summer of 1635 after sailing from London on May 21, 1635, aboard the ship Mathew. He settled in Newtowne, the community that is now Cambridge, and became one of the members of Thomas Hooker's congregation. He was one of the founders of Hartford, Connecticut.
Thomas Bull, also known as Captain Thomas Bull, was an early settler in the Connecticut Colony who is counted as one of the founders of Hartford, Connecticut.
During the American colonial era, the colonies of New York and Connecticut often disputed the precise location of their shared border, leading to a border dispute that eventually gave the colonies their modern shapes. Though the dispute was officially resolved in 1731, effects of the boundary conflict persisted until well after both colonies gained statehood as part of the United States following the American Revolution.
Clark, George Larkin. A History of Connecticut: Its People and Institutions (1914) 608 pp; based on solid scholarship online
Federal Writers' Project. Connecticut: A Guide to its Roads, Lore, and People (1940) famous WPA guide to history and to all the towns online
Fraser, Bruce. Land of Steady Habits: A Brief History of Connecticut (1988), 80 pp, from state historical society
Green, Jack P.; Pole, J.R. (1984). Colonial British America: Essays in the New History of the Early Modern Era. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN9780801830556.
Jones, Mary Jeanne Anderson. Congregational Commonwealth: Connecticut, 1636–1662 (1968)
Lipman, Andrew (2008). ""A meanes to knitt them togeather": the exchange of body parts in the Pequot War". William and Mary Quarterly. third series. 65 (1): 3–28. JSTOR25096768.
Roth, David M. and Freeman Meyer. From Revolution to Constitution: Connecticut, 1763–1818 (Series in Connecticut history) (1975) 111pp
Sanford, Elias Benjamin (1887). A history of Connecticut. S.S. Scranton.; very old textbook; strongest on military history, and schools
Taylor, Robert Joseph. Colonial Connecticut: A History (1979); standard scholarly history
Van Dusen, Albert E. Connecticut A Fully Illustrated History of the State from the Seventeenth Century to the Present (1961) 470pp the standard survey to 1960, by a leading scholar
Van Dusen, Albert E. Puritans against the wilderness: Connecticut history to 1763 (Series in Connecticut history) 150pp (1975)
Collier, Christopher. Roger Sherman's Connecticut: Yankee Politics and the American Revolution (1971)
Daniels, Bruce Colin. The Connecticut town: Growth and development, 1635–1790 (Wesleyan University Press, 1979)
Daniels, Bruce C. "Democracy and Oligarchy in Connecticut Towns-General Assembly Office holding, 1701-1790" Social Science Quarterly (1975) 56#3 pp: 460–475.
Fennelly, Catherine. Connecticut women in the Revolutionary era (Connecticut bicentennial series) (1975) 60pp
Grant, Charles S. Democracy in the Connecticut Frontier Town of Kent (1970)
Hooker, Roland Mather. The Colonial Trade of Connecticut (1936) online; 44pp
24Claimed in 1908; territory formed 1962; overlaps portions of Argentine and Chilean claims, borders not enforced but claim not renounced under the Antarctic Treaty.
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