USA > Connecticut > Connecticut as a colony and as a state; or, One of the original thirteen, Volume I > Part 18
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The General Court in 1639, by a general act, incorporated all the plantations as towns, authorizing them to manage their internal affairs. While this was only a recognition of existing rights, it was highly important, as it established a lo- cal tribunal and defined the limits of the towns' jurisdiction. The town tribunal was to consist of not less than three or more than seven members, elected by the people. These were called "principal men," and afterwards became known as "selectmen"; their presiding officer received the title of Mod- erator, and was only to have a casting vote. The body was to constitute a municipal court, and to hold session once in two months. There was also established a system of town rec- ords; and real-estate owners were required, under heavy penalties, to lodge a description of their properties for regis- tration, and all incumbrances on the same were of no legal value unless recorded. There were adopted measures in ref- erence to probating wills, and appraising and administering the estates of the deceased.
The year 1639 was propitious for the settlement of new towns. About ten families under the leadership of Thomas Fairfield came from Roxbury and Concord, Massachusetts, and settled at a place called by the Indians Cupheag, which means literally "a place shut in"; the English gave it the name of Stratford, in honor of the thriving town of that name situated a few miles from London. The plantation of Fairfield, whose Indian name was Unoquwa, or Uncoway,- "beyond" the Pequonnoc-was settled by eight or ten fam-
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ilies from Windsor, joined by parties from Watertown and Concord, Massachusetts; it received its present name in 1645. About forty planters from New Haven Colony re- moved to Menunkatuck, which in the Indian language was the name of a white fish used for fertilizing; the plantation in 1643 was named Guilford, for a town of the same name on the border of Sussex and Kent counties in England, from which one of the pillars of their church had emigrated.
Some two hundred English emigrants from Essex, Here- ford, and York counties, with settlers from Wethersfield, es- tablished a plantation at Wepowage ("crossing place"), which they purchased of the New Haven Colony. It was an independent settlement for the first few years of its ex- istence, and was renamed Milford on account of the first mill being erected near a ford.
Citizens of Hartford were attracted to the alluvial meadows on the banks of the Tunxis (now Farmington Riv- er), and as early as 1640 commenced a settlement about ten miles west of that town, which was incorporated in 1645 under the name of Farmington, as representing outlying farms.
The settlers of Wethersfield were from the first involved in civil and ecclesiastical difficulties. In 1641 the advice of Mr. Davenport and other gentlemen from New Haven was sought, to regulate church troubles; they induced about twenty planters and their families to place themselves under the jurisdiction of New Haven Colony. The party settled on the Rippowam tract, which had been purchased by the New Haven Colony from the Indians; its present name of Stamford was given it in 1641, from an ancient market and parliamentary borough on the Welland River in Lincoln- shire.
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The territory west of Stamford had been purchased in the interest of the New Haven Colony, and was first settled in 1640; but the purchasers violated their agreement and placed themselves under the government of New Nether- lands. They continued under this jurisdiction till 1662, when they became a part of the Commonwealth of Connecticut; the plantation was named Greenwich after the pleasure re- sort near London, now the seat of the famous Observatory.
Wethersfield, on account of the various migrations caused by dissatisfied spirits and want of congeniality amongst her early settlers, has been called the mother of towns. The New Haven Colony had purchased east of its boundaries an Indian tract named Totoket, denoting meadows on a great tidal river; it had been conveyed in 1640 to Samuel Eaton, who failed to comply with the stipulations of the grant; and a party of settlers from Wethersfield, in connection with a portion of Mr. Abraham Pierson's congregation from South Hampton, Long Island, effected in 1644 a settlement on the territory, and placed themselves under the jurisdiction of the New Haven Colony. It was called Branford, the current pronunciation of the London suburb Brentford, situated on both sides of the Brent River at its confluence with the Thames.
The founding of New London by John Winthrop, Jr., and others, was begun in the spring of 1646, under the auspices of the General Court of Massachusetts. Winthrop in the government of the settlement was associated with Mr. Thomas Peters, a brother of the celebrated Hugh Peters. This gentleman embarked for England in the fall of 1646, and never returned to America. The Winthrop brothers, John and Dean, passed the winter of that year on Fisher's Island; but in the spring of 1647 John Winthrop built a
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house on the mainland, and removed his family from Boston to the settlement. By a decision of the New England Con- gress the territory was placed under the jurisdiction of Con- necticut, and the General Court commissioned Winthrop to administer justice according to the laws of that colony. The Indian name of the settlement was Nameaug or Namlock, "fishing place"; the General Court recommended that the name of Fair Haven be given to the settlement; but Win- throp and his associates, realizing that while many of the cities and towns of England had been commemorated by ap- plying their names to locations in the New World, the me- tropolis had been neglected, decided that the infant prototype should be called New London, and to maintain the similitude the river was renamed the Thames.
It having been decreed by the General Court that a settle- ment should be made at Mattabesett, which in the Indian language denoted a place at a great rivulet or brook, a num- ber of planters from Hartford and Wethersfield, who were afterwards joined by parties from England and Massachu- setts, settled on the tract in 1646. It was incorporated in 1651, and two years afterwards its name was changed to Middletown.
As early as 1640 purchases had been made from the In- dians of territory west of Fairfield, but in 1649 there were only a few scattering settlers, amounting to about twenty families. The settlement was given town privileges in 1651, and was named Norwalk.
A company of thirty-five planters was formed at Say- brook, and in the winter of 1659 temporary huts were erected on a tract of land they had purchased at the head waters of the Thames River; it was incorporated under the name of Norwich, in honor of the shire town of the county of Nor-
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folk in England. The country lying between the Mystic and Pawcatuck Rivers had been settled as early as 1649; in 1658 the commissioners of the United Colonies of New Eng- land had placed the territory under the jurisdiction of Mas- sachusetts, and a town by the name of Southerton had been organized by that colony; it came under the government of Connecticut under the Royal Charter, and its name was changed to Stonington.
In May 1666 the General Assembly, to simplify the civic organization of the Commonwealth, erected the territory within its boundaries into four counties. The towns on the Connecticut River from Windsor on the north to the Thirty Mile Island, together with Farmington, were to be included in what was known as Hartford County. The lands from the east bounds of Guilford unto the west bounds of Milford were named New Haven County. The country from the east- ern limits of Stratford to the western boundary of the colony received the name of Fairfield County; and the tract between the Pawcatuck and Hammonassett Rivers, with Norwich, was to constitute a county to be called New London. In the establishment of these counties the general government gave them, each for the support of a grammar school, six hun- dred acres of land.
In 1663 twelve families who had emigrated from Hart- ford, Windsor, and Guilford, located on the Indian tract called Hammonassett. These were joined by sixteen other families, and the General Assembly in 1667 named the town they had incorporated Killingworth, a variant of the his- torical name of Kenilworth, the birthplace of one of the early proprietors of the town. The fertile valley of the Connecti- cut River between Middletown and Saybrook had also at- tracted the eyes of settlers; and a settlement known as East.
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Saybrook had been made on the river opposite to Saybrook in 1664. Three years later it was granted the privileges of a town under the name of Lyme, from a small seaport in Dorsetshire.
Settlers from the apper river towns, in 1662, removed to lands on both banks at the point known as Thirty Mile Island, being that distance from the mouth of the river. The plantation grew rapidly, and became a town in 1667 under the name of Haddam, presumably from Great Hadham in England, where was the family estate of Governor John Haynes.
In 1670 there were two additions to the towns of Con- necticut ; New Haven village was incorporated and given the name of Wallingford, from a small parliamentary borough in Berkshire: a portion of Windsor was created a township named Simsbury. Ecclesiastical dispute was again in the history of Connecticut to cause the migration of a portion of her people through the trackless wilderness, to establish a settlement in her uninhabited confines. The General Assem- bly had for half a score of years been agitated by religious divisions in Stratford; to these people came Governor Win- throp as a peacemaker, who, to terminate the differences, pro- posed that one of the contending parties should seek an asylum elsewhere, and promised his influence to procure a grant of land, and the privileges of an incorporated town. In the spring of 1673, fifteen planters with their families travelled north from Stratford, and after many days of mis- haps purchased from the Indians an extensive tract fifteen miles in width, now comprising Woodbury, Washington, Bethlehem, Roxbury, and a part of Oxford and Middlebury. These lands were incorporated in 1674 under the name of Woodbury.
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There had been several attempts to establish a town on the banks of the Naugatuck River; these had been bitterly op- posed by the people of Milford, but in 1675 there were twelve families residing on the territory. They were ex- pecting additional parties to join them, and had provided a permanent house of worship; at their request the General Assembly made them into a township to be called Derby, from the shire town of Derbyshire. A number of citizens of Farmington recommended to the General Assembly that the territory to the west of them was fertile enough to maintain a plantation; the legislature appointed a committee, who reported in 1674 that Mattatuck, which in the Indian language meant "badly wooded," could accommodate thirty families. The original number of proprietors was less than thirty, and in 1686 they were invested with corporate privi- leges; the aboriginal name being changed to Waterbury. The portion of Wethersfield east of the Connecticut River was in 1690 created a separate township under the name of Glastonbury, from a small market-town in the county of Somerset. Two years afterwards Windham was incorpo- rated; among its early settlers were descendants of the Ripley family, whose forefathers had emigrated from Hingham, England, and located in the town of the same name in Mas- sachusetts Bay Colony. The largest place in the vicinity of Hingham, England, was Wymondham on the eastern coast; from this the town derived its name.
The settlement of the region east of Norwich was re- tarded by King Philip's War; but in 1686 the General As- sembly granted parties the privilege of forming a plantation, which the following year was named Preston, from an im- portant manufacturing town in Lancashire. The colonial records do not show the date of its organization as a town,
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but it was first represented in the General Assembly in 1693. The organization of the town of Lebanon took place in 1700, and it was the first township in Connecticut to receive a Biblical name.
Connecticut at the opening of the eighteenth century showed its vitality, despite its poverty, by the steady increase of its towns. Its political divisions consisted of four coun- ties and thirty towns; settlements had diverged to every point of the compass, from her primitive centers to the very limits of her confines. The population of the Commonwealth was estimated to be about fifteen thousand souls, and her set- tlers had deserted the log cabins of their ancestors for sub- stantial dwellings of wood, stone, and brick. The property of the colony was estimated for taxing purposes at nearly £200,000 sterling; the number of males over sixteen years of age was approximately 3,800. The increase in organized towns was due to speculators and land companies, who with the consent of the General Assembly purchased the territory of the Indians and subdivided it into smaller allotments.
A tract of land had been purchased on both sides of the Quinebaug (Long Pond) River by Governor Winthrop, which was sparsely settled at the time of his death. The original tracts were of great extent, and when outlying dis- tricts came to be settled, the distance from the church required another division and thereby established a new town. A number of farmers of Massachusetts purchased from his heirs the northern portions of the grant, and began to plant and build upon it. The settlement gradually increased in population, and in 1699 an attempt was made to organize a town; the next year it was named Plainfield, from the pe- culiarities of its landscape. The organization of the town was delayed, owing to land and religious difficulties, but in
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1706 all troubles were finally settled. Two years later Plain- field was represented in the General Assembly. Three years previous to this, the country on the west bank of the Quine- baug was formed into a township and named Canterbury, in honor of the cathedral city in southern England.
On the western boundaries of the Commonwealth, a num- ber of planters from Norwalk had settled on a tract known to the Indians as Paquiage, which denoted open land; this tract was surveyed eight years afterwards, received town privileges in 1702, and was named Danbury from an Eng- lish village situated a few miles from the shire town of Essex County.
In 1698 the General Assembly enacted that a new planta- tion be established at Jeremy's Farm; settlement commenced soon afterwards, and five years later the planters were con- firmed in their patent; the town was named Colchester. That part of New London lying on the east bank of the Thames River was in 1705 created a township, and given the name of Groton. The selection of the names for these two towns may be attributed to the fact that they were organized dur- ing the administration of Fitz John Winthrop as governor; Groton, England, was the birthplace of the elder Winthrop, and the nearest important town to it was Colchester. The In- dian tract Nawbestuck ("pond-land"), which had been a part of Windham, was incorporated under the name of Mans- field, in honor of Major Moses Mansfield, one of its early settlers. Planters from Windsor, Saybrook, Long Island, and Northampton ( Massachusetts), had settled in the region east of Glastonbury, and in 1707 the General Assembly en- acted that it be given town privileges and be called Hebron, the name being derived from one of the oldest cities of Palestine.
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Ever since the beginning of the century settlements had been made on the eastern borders of the colony. In 1708 a township was erected and named Killingly, from a Yorkshire manor of that appellation owned by the Saltonstall family. The country north of Guilford known to the Indians as Coginchaug ("Long Swamp") was supposed to be the property of the adjoining towns; surveys developed the fact that it was unassigned territory, and in 1708 it was en- dowed with town privileges under the name of Durham, from the ancient episcopal city in the northern part of Eng- land, the original home of the Wadsworth family, whose de- scendants were prominently identified with the early history of Connecticut.
The citizens of Norwalk in 1708 purchased land on the western border of the colony, and the following year it was incorporated under the name of Ridgefield, on account of its physical features. A tract of land lying north of Lebanon and west of Mansfield, granted to legatees by a Sachem of the Mohegans, had been settled by planters from Hartford and Northampton ; at the October session of the General As- sembly in 171 1 it was incorporated as a town, under the name of Coventry. Warwickshire, its namesake of historic fame, is situated on a gentle eminence in a valley, with a ridge of hills at the south, and the similarity of the landscape may have suggested the name to the early proprietors. The same session of the legislature incorporated the town of Newtown. The following year planters from Milford purchased of the colony a tract of land called Weantinoge, denoting "Indians' home." This tract was located on the Housatonic River, and it was enacted by the General Assembly in 1712 that it should be organized as a township under the name of New Milford.
Wabbaquassett, literally "covering," but originally the
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name of a locality in the northeastern part of the colony, was purchased by Major James Fitch and others as early as 1684. Two years later a permanent settlement was effected, and in 1713 a town was organized and called Pomfret; the name was derived from Pontefract (commonly pronounced Pumfret), a market and municipal borough of Yorkshire, in which was situated the ancestral manor-house of the chief executive of the colony at the time of the incorporation of the town. About 1704 a few pioneers had settled on lands north of Mansfield; two years later it was surveyed by the General Assembly, and incorporated under the name of Ashford in 1714. The following year the General Assembly granted town privileges to Tolland, north of Coventry.
The colony had granted land on her eastern borders as pensions to volunteers in the Narragansett war; settlements had been made on this tract in 1696, and in 1708 it was named Voluntown, the first two syllables of the word volun- teer being used; it was incorporated as a town in 1719.
The northwestern part of the colony, still in its native wil- derness, was designated as the western lands. In 1718 a tract of land known to the Indians as Bantam was sold to a com- pany by the colony; it was incorporated the following year under the name of Litchfield, after the ancient episcopal city of Lichfield in Staffordshire.
This settlement was to germinate others, peopling the hunting-grounds of the aborigines with tillers of the soil and builders of towns. The next year Bolton, which had been settled since 1716 by planters from the Connecticut River towns, was granted town privileges; it derived its name from the important English manufacturing town in south Lanca- shire. The General Assembly in 1726 took parts of Hart- ford and New London Counties, and created a new county,
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giving it the name of Windham; it comprised the towns of Windham, Lebanon, Plainfield, Canterbury, Mansfield, Cov- entry, Pomfret, Killingly, Ashford, Voluntown, and Mort- lake, the last being the name of a grant of lands that af- terwards became a part of the town of Brooklyn.
The colony in 1720 had sold, for £510 sterling, a tract of land to Roger Wolcott and his associates; a few families had settled in that region prior to the sale, and in 1727 it was incorporated under the name of Willington. The coun- try on the east side of the Connecticut River, in the town of Haddam, was created a new township in 1734 and named East Haddam. The same year Union was incorporated; but it was not represented in the Assembly, nor was any state tax levied on it till 1780.
The northwestern section of Connecticut was a wild, and at this period strenuous exertions were put forward by the colony to encourage settlements in that region. Citi- zens from Hartford, Windsor, and Farmington were granted territory on which settlements were made in 1731; town privileges were extended in 1739, and the name of Harwin- ton adopted, the first syllables of Hartford and Windsor and the last of Farmington being taken to make the name of the town. The General Assembly had granted to residents of Hartford a tract of land on which the first settlements had been made in 1733; five years later it was incorporated under the name of New Hartford.
The banner year for creating new towns was 1739, when Goshen, Canaan, Kent, and Sharon were invested with town privileges ; the cause of this was due to public auctions held by the colony to dispose of the territory. The land compris- ing the town of Goshen was sold at New Haven in 1737, those of Canaan at New London, and those of Kent at Wind-
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ham in the following year. The region comprising Sharon was surveyed in 1732, and settled by parties from Lebanon and Colchester.
The General Assembly in 1707 granted to a number of in- habitants of Fairfield a tract of land on the western borders ; settlements had been made upon it in 1730, but owing to dit- ficulties in reference to the boundary lines between New York and the colony, it was not incorporated till 1740, when it was named New Fairfield. There had been allotted to Windsor parties a tract of land which in 1732 was named Torrington ; it was surveyed two years later, and settled in 1737 by emi- grants from Windsor and Durham. At the session of the General Assembly held in 1740 it received town privileges.
The territory comprising Cornwall was surveyed in 1738, and divided into fifty-three allotments, which were sold at Fairfield for £50 each; the principal settlers were from Plain- field, and it was created a township in 1740. The extreme northwestern corner of the colony was known to the govern- ment as wild and unlocated lands, although as early as 1720 there were settlers within its limits. It was surveyed in 1732, sold by the colony in 1737, and incorporated as a town under the name of Salisbury in 1741. This was the name of one of its earliest settlers, who, it is said, was the cause of the death of an unruly servant-girl, for which he was sentenced by New York authorities to be hanged when he was one hun- dred years of age; it is said that the offender lived to pass the century mark, and it became necessary to grant him a re- prieve.
Some of the northern border towns of the Commonwealth were originally included in the grant made by the Massachu- setts Bay Colony to the Springfield patentees; this was a source of complaint from Connecticut as early as 1642, in
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which year Massachusetts employed two surveyors, who ran the southern boundaries many miles south of the true line. The extreme southern part of this tract was incorporated into a township by the Bay Colony, in 1674, under the name of Suffield. The territory on the east bank of the Connecti- cut River, opposite Suffield, was granted town privileges in 1683 and called Enfield; this town was divided in 1726, and the eastern part was created a town and named East En- field, changed eight years afterwards to Somers. Settlers from Roxbury, Massachusetts, had in 1686 emigrated to a point east of Somers on the border line, which they gave the name of New Roxbury; the General Assembly of Massachu- setts in 1690 incorporated the region under the name of Woodstock. Thus before 1700 there were three fully organ- ized towns on Connecticut's soil that paid taxes and were sub- servient to the jurisdiction of Massachusetts. This caused dissatisfaction in Connecticut, and in 1694 a committee was appointed to run the boundary line; they reported that the former survey was erroneous, and that the inhabitants of Suf- field and Enfield were encroaching on the neighboring towns of Simsbury and Windsor.
In 1700 Connecticut again attempted to obtain an amica- ble settlement of the difficulties, and two years later appointed commissioners, who by actual surveys ascertained that the line should be a considerable distance north of the former limits. The Bay Colony dissented from this report, and in 1708 Connecticut appointed commissioners with full powers to establish the boundaries, and if Massachusetts would not unite to complete the transaction, an appeal to the Crown was threatened. By dilatory actions Massachusetts delayed the matter five years; but finally commissioners were appointed by both colonies, who decided that the line was north of
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