USA > Connecticut > A history of Connecticut, its people and institutions, pt 1 > Part 2
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A History of Connecticut
living of forty pounds, the gift of Francis Drake. Soon afterward he was appointed to a lectureship, a method of reaching the people when preaching fell into disuse. Laud said that lecturers were "the people's creatures" and "blew the bellows of sedition." Hooker's influence appears in a letter written to Laud's chancellor by a minister who said, "His genius will still haunt all the pulpits where any of his scholars may be admitted to preach. There be divers young ministers about us that spend their time in conference with him, and return home and preach what he hath brewed. Our people's pallets grow so out of tast, yt noe food contents them but of Mr. Hooker's dressing." The lectures were delivered on the market-days and Sunday afternoons, and on one occasion in the presence of the judges and before a large congregation, he "declared freely the sins of England, and the plagues that would come" for such sins. Mather quotes one as saying of him that "he was a person, who while doing his Master's work would put a king in his pocket."
In 1629, Laud turned his attention to the lecturers, and among the first to feel the weight of his heavy hand was Thomas Hooker of Chelmsford, who was compelled to retire to a village four miles away, where he taught school in his house, and the next year he was cited to appear before the High Commission, but he escaped arrest, he went to Holland and, in 1633, we find him in Boston. Hooker's sister was wife of John Pym, who pleaded for the restoration of the Puritan clergy, but the opposition was too strong and Laud's influence was growing. The voyage was of eight weeks' duration, and the conversations must have been interesting, for besides Hooker was Samuel Stone, a lecturer, and later associate pastor with Hooker, and also John Cotton and John Haynes. Cotton stayed in Boston, while Hooker and Stone went to Cambridge. On October 11, 1633, Hooker was chosen pastor and Stone teacher, and Hubbard says that "after Mr. Hooker's coming over, it was noticed
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The Settlement
that many of the freemen grew to be very jealous of their liberties." Cambridge was prospering with its hundred families; its tax was as large as that of Boston, and John Haynes was chosen governor in 1635, but an uneasiness arose. The town "complained of straitness for want of land, especially meadow." Enlargements were granted to include what is now Brighton, Brookline, Newton, and Arlington, but the uneasiness continued. Hubbard, who lived within fifty years of these events, says that other motives did "more secretly and powerfully drive on the business. Two such eminent stars as were Mr. Cotton and Mr. Hooker, both of the first magnitude, could not continue in one and the same orb." In a letter written to John Wilson, a writer says that he heard "that ther is great diusion of judgment in matters of religion amongst good ministers and people which moued Mr. Hoker to remoue." He also wrote: " You are so strict in admission of members to your church, that more than half are out of your church . .. and that Mr. Hoker, befor he went away, preached against yt." John Winthrop, the grave, scholarly and deeply religious Moses of the Puritan migration to America, found John Cotton, his gifted minister, an able yoke-fellow in the position that it would be calamitous to allow any one who was not a member of the Congregational Church to vote or hold office. This combination of the aristocratic and the political was not popular in some of the towns. Samuel Stone said it was a "speaking aristocracy in the face of a silent democracy."
The number of freemen had increased so rapidly that in 1630, they could not all meet in one place to transact busi- ness, and a board of assistants was appointed to choose the governor and make laws, and in May, 1631, it was further decided that the assistants need not be chosen every year, but might keep their seats during good behavior, or until set aside by the vote of the freemen. This was not agree- able to Cambridge, Watertown and Dorchester, and they sent a deputation to Boston to inspect the charter, to see
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if such power was authorized by it. The method of electing assistants was changed, but Cotton was ever strenuous in a position, in which he had with him a majority of the ministers, that democracy was no fit government either for church or commonwealth. Chief in opposition was Hooker, who maintained against the proposition that "the best part is always the least, and of the best part the wiser is always the lesser," that "in matters of greater consequence, which concern the common Good a General Council, chosen by all to transact businesses which concern all, I conceive, under favor most suitable to rule, and most safe for relief of the whole."
It appears thus that the motives leading to the migra- tion were political, democratic, and commercial, for there were many who preferred a more popular basis for the govern- ment than that which prevailed at Boston Bay, where the right to vote was so strictly guarded that only one man in six had suffrage. Land hunger also impelled many, not so much through lack of pasturage, of which there was suffi- cient in eastern Massachusetts, but the fertility of the Connecticut valley appealed strongly to the enterprising. Although theoretically there was scanty place for freedom in Massachusetts, especially for extremists like Mrs. Hutchin- son, Roger Williams, and the Quakers, the actual condition was not as trying as one might think for most people, because of the sturdy common sense of the settlers, who demanded much liberty of discussion. The towns of Cambridge, Water- town, and Dorchester (together with Roxbury, which settled Springfield) developed a more energetic local self-govern- ment than elsewhere, and in 1631, Dorchester and Watertown led the way in organizing town government by selectmen. In that year a tax of sixty pounds was assessed upon the settlements to pay for building frontier fortifications in Cambridge, and the inhabitants of Watertown at first declined to pay their share of this tax, on the ground that English freemen cannot rightfully be taxed, save by their
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The Settlement
consent, a protest which led to a change in the constitution of the colony. In view of these facts it is not strange that in May, 1634, the congregation at Cambridge petitioned the General Court for permission to move to some other quarter within Massachusetts. The petition was granted, and messengers were sent to Ipswich and Merrimac to look for a location, but after the invitation of the Indians on the Connecticut, a petition was presented to the Court in September for leave to go outside Massachusetts, and it was rejected by the assistants, though the deputies favored it. In the spring of 1635, some of the Watertown and Dor- chester people were more successful with their application, and it was voted to allow them to go, provided that they continued under the Massachusetts authority.
We have given an account of the building of a trading house at Windsor in September, 1633; in the autumn of 1634, ten householders and planters, called "Adventurers," including the venturesome and trying pioneer, John Oldham, settled at Pyquag, or Wethersfield; building huts they broke the land and sowed some rye, thus starting agricultural life on the Connecticut, and during the following May about thirty more took up land there. In 1635, Windsor received the first installment from Dorchester, and a company direct from England. In October, some sixty men, women, and children, driving before them cows, horses, and swine, set out by land and reached the Connecticut "after a tedious and difficult journey," but the river froze over by November 15, and the vessel that carried provisions for the winter for the colonists was stayed at Saybrook. Fearing starva- tion, most of the settlers went to the mouth of the river, loosened a sloop from the ice, and returned to Boston. When the spring came many Cambridge people sold their lands on the Charles River, and in June, 1636, a large number of people took the " Old Connecticut Path," through Wayland, Framingham, Oxford, and Springfield, the path over which Oldham went three years before, "lodging
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A History of Connecticut
in Indian towns all the way." It was not an imposing- looking procession: men, women, and children on foot, though, because of ill health, Mrs. Hooker was carried in a litter; the only band of music that attended it was the lowing of a hundred and sixty cattle and the squealing of the pigs; but the presence of Hooker, Haynes, Stone, and Bull gave dignity to this movement of American democracy. Through the summer of 1636, people traveled to Connecti- cut, and almost daily a few would take up land and build their houses. Fever for change also seized some of the Roxbury people, and Agawam, or Springfield, was settled by a company of people under the leadership of William Pynchon.
The site of Hartford was deeded by Sachem Sequasson to Samuel Stone, William Goodwin and others, and while the original deed of 1636, was lost, a deed confirming the first and extending the original grant westward, executed by the heirs of Sequasson, is recorded in the Hartford Land Records. The settlers were known as proprietors, and to every one were allotted a house lot, a piece of meadow land and a wood lot; the remainder of the land was called the Town Commons. These lots were not recorded until October 10, 1639, when the General Court ordered that the three towns should provide a "ledger Booke, with an index or alphabett unto the same: Also shall choose one who shall be a Towne Clerke or Register, who shall . .. record every man's house and land already graunted and measured out to him." This book, known as the Book of Distribution, is the first book of land records in the town clerk's office in Hartford. Here is a sample entry: "Severall parsilles of land in Hartford upon the River of Coneckticott belonging to John Steele, Sinor, and to his heirs forever. VIZ: One parsill on which his now dwelling house standeth with other outt houses, yardes and gardins." The name of Hartford at first was Newe Towne, but within a year it was changed, since Stone and many other settlers were from Hertford, England, and the capital
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The Settlement
of Connecticut was called "Harteford Towne. And like- wise the plantacon nowe called Watertowne shall be called Wythersfield, and the plantacon called Dorchester shall be called Windsor." There are two landmarks remaining from the earliest times: the graveyard back of the First Church, where many of the famous settlers were buried, and the well of Thomas Hooker, still in use in a foundry on Arch Street.
The coming of the Dorchester people to the neighborhood of the Plymouth fort at Windsor gave the Pilgrims there no little uneasiness in the spring of 1635, and Jonathan Brew- ster, in a letter from the fort in July, tells of the daily arrival by land and water of small parties of settlers. At length these newcomers, headed by Roger Ludlow, one of the ablest and richest men in Massachusetts, claiming that the land was theirs as the "Lord's waste" by "the Providence of God," moved into the midst of the Plymouth people, who protested against the Dorchester settlement on the Plymouth Great Meadow. As the Plymouth men had ignored the claims of the Dutch, so now the Dorchester people ignored the Pilgrim claims to the property, and proposed to allow the Plymouth people only one share, "as to a single family." A protest against the Dorchester intrusion was reported by Brewster at Plymouth, and Bradford entered his objec- tion, contending that it was an attempt to "thrust them all out." Winslow went from Plymouth to Boston and had a fruitless conference with the Dorchester leaders. The negotiations with the Bay magistrates came to nothing. "Many were the letters and passages" that were indulged in by the sturdy combatants. Pious phrases and greedy purposes furnish interesting reading. Both appealed to God's good providence, and while Plymouth had the better argument, . Dorchester had the greater power. The Ply- mouth men would not resort to arms, as it was "far from their thoughts to live in continual contention with their friends and brethren, though they conceived that they suf-
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A History of Connecticut
fered much in the thing"; accordingly they entered into a treaty, insisting only that the Dorchester people should acknowledge their rights to the territory. "After much ado," the Plymouth house was retained by the Plymouth men with a sixteenth of all the land bought of the Indians, and the project of abandoning the "barren place" on Plymouth sands was given up.
While these settlements were forming on the river, steps were being taken to secure the mouth of it. There arrived at Boston on October 5, 1635, the ship Abigail, bring- ing among her passengers three men of note, representing the Lords and Gentlemen. These were John Winthrop, Jr., Sir Harry Vane, and Rev. Hugh Peters. Winthrop bore a commission from the Lords and Gentlemen, dated July 15, 1635, and this commission named the bearer "Governor of the River Connecticut, with the places adjoining there unto, for and during the space of one whole year, after the arrival there," with "full power to do and execute any such lawful thing ... as to the dignity or office of a governor doth or may appertain." Learning that the Dutch were bent on gaining the same place, twenty men went to the river and soon a fort was erected by Lyon Gardener, an expert military engineer, who had seen service in the Nether- lands, near the point where Hans den Sluys had affixed the Dutch arms to a tree two years before. Hardly had the English mounted two cannon, when a Dutch vessel appeared, but finding the place occupied it returned to New Amster- dam. Winthrop was a superb leader of an enterprise which was designed to establish a home for some of the English gentry and plain folks after the persecution of the Puritans by the royal government had reached its height. Gardener was an able officer and skillful in laying out the town. He was just in his dealings with the Indians, whose prowess he did not slight, and whose cruelty he understood. When some Bay men spoke lightly of the Indian arrows, Gardener sent them a dead man's rib, with an arrowhead, which had
John Winthrop, Jr., of New London, 1606-1676; Governor 1657-1676, with the Exception of 1658
F.om a Painting by George F. Wright of Hartford, in Memorial Hall Connecticut State Capitol
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The Settlement
gone through the body, and stuck so fast that no one could draw it out. An effort was made to persuade the English up river to acknowledge Governor Winthrop of Saybrook, and though the appeal was skillfully and courteously made, the "loving resolutions," which the politicians at the mouth of the river longed for, never floated down stream, the question being adroitly evaded or quietly ignored. The Hooker and Haynes contingent "carved largely for them- selves." George Fenwick went to Saybrook in the summer of 1635, while Winthrop was in control, and three years later he returned with more parade, two vessels, and wife and family. His home on Saybrook Point was described, in 1641, as a "faire house" well fortified. With the Fen- wicks was John Higginson, a young minister who was chaplain, and after his death at ninety-three, his eulogist sang:
Young to the pulpit he did get, And seventy-two years in 't did sweat.
Fenwick maintained his independent state till the end of 1644, when he ceded his possessions to the up-river colony, with the jurisdiction of all the territory claimed under the Lords and Gentlemen's patent, on condition of a tribute for ten years of certain duties on corn, biscuit, beaver-skins, and live stock exported from the river, and while the carrying out of this agreement brought Connecticut into conflict with Massachusetts over the question of taxing Springfield, the question was decided by the commissioners of the colonies in favor of Connecticut, which continued the tax for ten years.
In 1643, Winthrop was admitted to the first conference to form the New England Union, and as that body recognized only four colonies, Plymouth, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Haven, Connecticut wisely appointed him one of her commissioners in 1643, and 1644, with Edward Hop- kins as the other. Fenwick was as closely identified with
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A History of Connecticut
Connecticut as he could be, and he rendered an important service to Connecticut, when Massachusetts laid claim to the Pequot country after the war with the Indians. He interposed a protest against any decision in 1644, which would impeach his principal's title, and thus gained time for the Connecticut Colony to secure a stronger hold on the conquered lands; with the conclusion of the agreement of 1644, Saybrook became a Connecticut township.
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CHAPTER III
SETTLEMENT CONCLUDED
FIVE years after the colonists began to build their log houses on the Connecticut, another settlement started on the Sound at Quinnipiac, or New Haven, under the leader- ship of Theophilus Eaton, Edward Hopkins, John Daven- port, and several other well-to-do and most serious men. Massachusetts authorities made every effort to persuade these desirable emigrants to tarry there; Charlestown mak- ing them large offers, and Newbury proposing to give up the whole town to them; the General Court promising them any place they might choose. But this friendliness did not persuade them, and after a stay of nine months, they chose to have a colony after their own ideas. Resulting from the Pequot war was the discovery of land west of Say- brook, and in the autumn of 1637, Theophilus Eaton and others explored the region; so well pleased were they that in March, 1638, a company settled at New Haven, and on April 18, they kept their first Sunday there, gathering under an oak to listen to John Davenport, their minister.
A leading reason for the settlement was to be away from the general government of New England should there be any, and also because there were so many able men in office in Massachusetts that newcomers had scanty opportunity to build a state after their own ideas. On reaching New Haven, the wealthy leaders, accustomed to elegant houses
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A History of Connecticut
in London, put up elaborate homes; Governor Eaton built one on Elm Street, large enough to contain nineteen fire- places, and Davenport's opposite is said to have had thirteen fireplaces.
Determined to establish the colony according to the Scriptures, a meeting was called soon after the arrival, and at the close of a day of fasting and prayer .. they made a "Plantation Covenant," in which they solemnly bound themselves "that, as in matters that concern the gathering and ordering of a church, so also in all public offices, which concern civil order, as choice of magistrates and officers, making and repealing laws, dividing allotment of inheritance, and all other things of like nature, they would all of them be ordered by the rules which the Scriptures held forth to them." This was the general platform on which all were to stand, until they could elaborate the details of state. It was a backward spring, and corn rotted in the ground, but at length warm weather came and the crops were generous. The purpose was to have an extensive colony, and if possible to keep on friendly terms with the Indians. On November 24, 1638, they bought of Momaguin, the sole sachem of the region, a large tract, paying for it twelve coats of English cloth, twelve brass spoons, twelve hatchets, twenty-four knives, twelve porringers, and four cases of French knives and scissors. In December, they bought a tract ten by thirteen miles, north of the former, a tract which now in- cludes parts of New Haven, Branford, Wallingford, East Haven, Woodbridge, Cheshire, Hampden, and North Haven. For the second lot the payment was thirteen coats, with liberty granted to the Indians to hunt within the lands. In the summer of 1639, they met in Robert Newman's barn, and in a formal way laid the foundations of their permanent government. It was on June 4, that the free planters gathered, and Davenport preached from the text, "Wisdom hath builded her house; she hath hewn out her seven pillars," and from this he gathered that the church
1.11:1: ١ 1
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Settlement Concluded
should be formed of seven principal men. He proposed a series of propositions, and Robert Newman was asked to "write in characters, and to read distinctly and audibly," six questions, which were discussed, and the results were adopted "by holding up their hands." The following reso- lutions which were subscribed and signed by the one hundred and eleven present, were the fundamental articles of New Haven Colony.
I. That the Scriptures give a perfect rule for direction and government of church, family, and commonwealth.
II. That churches, public offices, magistrates, making and repealing laws, and inheriting of property should be governed by Scripture rules.
III. That all who had come into the plantation had done so with the purpose of being church members.
IV. That all free planters bound themselves to establish such civil order as might best secure peace and purity to themselves and posterity, according to God.
V. That church members only should be free burgesses; and that they should choose magistrates among themselves to transact all public business, make and repeal laws, divide inheritances, decide difficulties, and attend to all else of a like nature.
VI. That twelve men should be chosen to select seven to begin the church.
A solemn charge or oath to give to all freemen was drawn, and it was ordered that all candidates for citizenship in the colony should subscribe to the foregoing agreement. After due term of trial, Theophilus Eaton, John Davenport, Robert Newman, Matthew Gilbert, Thomas Fugill, John Punderson, and Jeremiah Dixon were chosen to be the seven pillars of the church, and they proceeded to organize church and state. They first set up the church by associating with themselves nine others, and on October 25, 1639, they held a court at which those sixteen men elected Theophilus Eaton as governor for a year and four others to aid him as
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deputies; those officers were addressed by John Davenport in what was called a charge. There were no statute laws for many years, and for the time the only restriction on the rulers was the rules of the Mosaic law. The body of free burgesses was cautiously enlarged. This government of New Haven disfranchised more than half of the settlers, and the laws afterward enacted gradually brought the government into close resemblance to that of Massachusetts.
The next half-century saw the settlement of twenty-five other towns, three of which began in 1639-Guilford, Mil- ford, and Stratford. The people of New Haven were hardly established before Guilford, sixteen miles east of New Haven, was settled in August by a company of forty planters from Surrey and Kent; they had left England in full sympathy with Davenport, and formed their government on seven pillars, with Henry Whitfield and Samuel Desborough as leaders. The first town to settle on the Housatonic was Milford, whose Moses and Aaron were Peter Prudden and William Fowler. They chose their seven pillars and formed their government after the New Haven model, except that they admitted six planters who were not church members. Their land was purchased by four men who went in advance of the rest and purchased a tract two miles long, paying six coats, ten blankets, one kettle, and a number of hoes, knives, hatchets, and glasses. The settlers in Milford came from Essex and York, with the addition of a few who had been unhappy in Wethersfield-forty-four in all. The Stratford lands were purchased in 1639, settlement made at once, and in 1673, after a church quarrel, about fifteen families, consti- tuting half the congregation, taking their minister, settled in Woodbury. In the political isolation of these towns we see the principle of church independence advocated by Davenport and his followers. Branford was purchased in December, 1638, by the New Haven colonists, a few days after they had bought New Haven, and in 1644, a tract of this land was sold to William Swaim and others for some
The Old Home of Hon. John Webster, Fifth Governor of Connecticut, at Hartford
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A Typical Chain Ferry
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Settlement Concluded
people in Wethersfield, who wished to move; and at the same time with the coming of the Wethersfield people, Abraham Pierson appeared on the ground with a part of the church and congregation of Southampton, Long Island, and a church was formed with Pierson as minister, but they soon became discontented with the New Haven style of government and moved to Newark, New Jersey, a migration in which Milford, New Haven, and Guilford had a prominent part. Another ancient town, Fairfield, is in the territory dis- covered when the troops were in pursuit of the Pequots in 1637. Roger Ludlow, who was with the troops when they went to the great swamp in the town, was so well pleased with the fine land in the vicinity, he planned a settlement, and, in 1639, he, with eight or nine families of Windsor, began the settlement of Fairfield, being reinforced in a short time by pioneers from Watertown and Concord.
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