The history of the colony was a series of disappointments and failures. The most serious problem was that New Haven Colony never had a charter giving it legal title to exist. The larger, stronger colony of Connecticut to the north did have a charter. New Haven's leaders were businessmen and traders, but they were never able to build up a large or profitable trade because their agricultural base was poor, farming the rocky soil was difficult, and the location was isolated.[citation needed]
History
In 1637, a group of London merchants and their families moved to Boston with the intention of creating a new settlement. The leaders were John Davenport, a Puritan minister, and Theophilus Eaton, a wealthy merchant who brought £3,000 to the venture. Both had experience in fitting out vessels for the Massachusetts Bay Company. The two ships that they chartered arrived in Boston on June 26, 1637. They learned about the area around the Quinnipiac River from militia engaged in the Pequot War, so Eaton set sail to view the area in late August.[3] The site seemed ideal for trade, with a good port lying between Boston and the Dutch city of New Amsterdam on Manhattan and good access to the furs of the Connecticut River valley settlements of Hartford and Springfield.
Eaton returned to Boston, leaving seven men to remain through the winter and make preparations for the arrival of the rest of the company. The main body of settlers landed on April 14, 1638, numbering about 250, with the addition of some from Massachusetts.[citation needed] A number of the early dwellings were caves or "cellers", partially underground and carved into hillsides.[3]
Founding as Quinnipiac
A 19th-century map showing New Haven in 1641, featuring the town's nine-square plan with the Green and meeting house at its center.
The first English settlers gave their settlement the name Quinnipiac (rendered in various spellings, including “Quinipiek” in local records from the time[4]).[5] The name lasted until September 1, 1640 (O.S.), when records of the plantation’s general court note “This towne now named Newhaven [sic].”[6]
The settlers had no official charter. Historian Edward Channing describes them as squatters,[7] whereas author Edward Atwater holds that a land purchase from the local natives had been effected sometime before their arrival in April, although no written deed was signed until November 24, 1638.[3] A second deed was made December 11, 1638 for a ten by thirteen mile tract north of the first purchase.[8]
Fundamental Agreement
A 19th-century engraving of the first New Haven meeting house, which was in use from 1639 to 1670.
On October 25, 1639, the colonists adopted a "Fundamental Agreement" for self-government, partly as a result of a similar action in the Connecticut Colony.[9] According to its terms, a court composed of 16 burgesses, i.e. voting citizens, was established to appoint a magistrate and officials and to conduct the business of the plantation. The only eligible voters were "planters" who were members of "some or other of the approved Churches of New England". This excluded indentured servants, temporary residents, and transient persons, who were considered to have no permanent interest in the community.[10]
They further determined "that the word of God shall be the only rule to be attended unto in ordering the affairs of government in this plantation."[11] Theophilus Eaton was chosen as the first Magistrate. As the Bible contains no reference to trial by jury, the colonists eliminated it and the magistrate sat in judgment.[12]
This is said to have been one of "the first examples in history of a written constitution organizing a government and defining its powers."[13]
Formation of New Haven Colony
The plantation (or town) soon had neighboring settlements established by other groups of Puritans from England.:[11]
Nearby, two settlements independent of Quinnipiac formed: the settlement at Wepowauge (later known as Milford) by a land grant to English settlers from the Paugusset on February 12, 1639 and at Menunkatuck (later known as Guilford) by land grant to English settlers from the Quinnipiac on September 29, 1639.[11]
Settlers from New Haven established Rippowam (later known as Stamford) and Southold on the North Fork of Long Island in 1640.
And about 1640, New Haven bought the land that became Greenwich from the Siwanoy Indians.[14] Through the intrigues of Dutch Gov. Peter Stuyvesant, the first inhabitants revolted with the Dutch.[14]
On October 23, 1643, in the context of the formation of the New England Confederation, composed of Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth and Connecticut Colonies, for joint military action against threats of attack by natives, the New Haven Plantation and its subsidiary settlements, Stamford and Southhold on Long Island, were combined with the independent towns of Milford and Guilford and named the New Haven Colony which then joined the Confederation.[citation needed] The town of Branford was settled in 1644 by residents from Wethersfield, Connecticut Colony, who were dissatisfied with the theocratic rule there. They joined the New Haven Colony. Eaton served as governor of the new colony until his death in 1658.[15]
The treaty with the Lenape placed no westward limit on the land west of the Delaware, which became the legal basis for a Connecticut "sea to sea" claim of owning all the land on both sides of the Delaware from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. This set the stage for the Pennamite-Yankee War of 150 years later.[citation needed]
In 1642, 50 families on a ship captained by George Lamberton settled at the mouth of Schuylkill River to establish the trading post at what is today Philadelphia. The Dutch and Swedes who were already in the area burned their buildings, and a court in New Sweden convicted Lamberton of "trespassing, conspiring with the Indians."[17] The New Haven Colony did not get any support from its New England patrons, and Puritan Governor John Winthrop testified that the "Delaware Colony" "dissolved" owing to "sickness and mortality."[18]
With no ships of its own, the colony had to do all of its trade through Massachusetts. Accordingly Theophilus Eaton commissioned the construction of a 150-ton trade ship for the colony.[19] The ship was quite poorly constructed but nonetheless after some difficulty was sent out of the Long Island Sound and off to England. The ship would never be seen again. According to Cotton Mather in his Magnalia Christi Americana, the settlers gathered on the beach where they saw a detailed vision of a ship in the aftermath of a storm.[20] The fate of the ship was depicted in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1847 poem "The Phantom Ship."[21]
New Haven urgently needed a royal charter, but the colony had made enemies in London by hiding and protecting the regicide judges.[22] An uneasy competition ruled New Haven's relations with the larger and more powerful Connecticut River settlements centered on Hartford. New Haven published a complete legal code in 1656, but the law remained very much church-centered. A major difference between the New Haven and Connecticut colonies was that the Connecticut Colony permitted other churches to operate on the basis of "sober dissent", while the New Haven Colony only permitted the Puritan church to exist.[citation needed] A royal charter was issued to Connecticut in 1662, ending New Haven's period as a separate colony, and its towns were merged into the government of Connecticut Colony in 1664.[23]
A group of New Haven colonists led by Robert Treat and others moved to establish a new community in New Jersey in 1666, seeking to maintain the Puritan religious exclusivism and theocracy that was lost with the New Haven Colony's merger with Connecticut Colony. Treat wanted to name the new community after Milford, Connecticut. However Abraham Pierson was to urge that the new community be named "New Ark" or "New Work" which was to evolve into the name Newark, New Jersey.[24][25]
↑ R. W. Roetger, "New Haven's Charter Quest and Annexation by Connecticut", Connecticut History (1988) vol 29 pp 16–26.
↑ Charles M. Andrews, The Colonial Period of American History: The Settlements II (1936) pp 187–194
↑ New Jersey Opinion: Where Did This Name Come From? by Abraham Resnick – New York Times – February 25, 1990]
↑ Edward Paul Rindler, "The Migration from the New Haven Colony to Newark, East New Jersey: A Study of Puritan Values and Behavior, 1630–1720" PhD dissertation U of Pennsylvania; Dissertation Abstracts International (1978), 38#11 pp 6792–6792 online
Further reading
Andrews, Charles M. The Colonial Period of American History: The Settlements II (1936).
Blue, Jon C. The Case of the Piglet's Paternity: Trials from the New Haven Colony, 1639–1663. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2015.
Calder, Isabel M. The New Haven Colony New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1934.
Little, Ann M. "Men on Top? The Farmer, the Minister, and Marriage in Early New England," Pennsylvania History (1997) vol 64 Special Issue, pp 123–150, based on records of New Haven Colony
24Claimed in 1908; territory formed 1962; overlaps portions of Argentine and Chilean claims, borders not enforced but claim not renounced under the Antarctic Treaty.
The Thirteen Colonies were a group of British colonies on the Atlantic coast of North America during the 17th and 18th centuries. In the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), they established their independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain as the United States of America.
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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.
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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.
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John Brockett was born in England. He was one of the early British settlers in the area of New Haven, Connecticut, and later helped found the town of Wallingford which he represented in the Connecticut General Assembly.
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