USA > Connecticut > Connecticut as a colony and as a state; or, One of the original thirteen, Volume I > Part 19
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Enfield, Suffield, and Woodstock, and that these towns were in the limits of Connecticut. The two colonies then entered into the famous agreement of 1713, in which Massachusetts was to have jurisdiction over the border towns, though they were south of that colony's boundaries. To compensate Con- necticut for these privileges, Massachusetts was to give the same amount of territory in her western confines, and to sell her more distant lands at a cheap price. These unimproved lands were called "Equivalent Lands," and were sold by Con- necticut in 1716, realizing $2,274, which was donated to Yale College. These lands aggregated about 107,000 acres ; and one-half of them, while they were supposed to be in Mas- sachusetts, were really in the district to be known as Ver- mont. The lands were sold to private purchasers, and in 1729 the pioneers left their native state to settle their new purchases.
This was the status of affairs when, in 1724, Enfield and Suffield petitioned the General Assembly of Connecticut to be placed under their jurisdiction, claiming that they were within the charter limits of the colony. The inhabitants of Woodstock, while satisfied with the government at Bos- ton, thought they could secure greater privileges under Con- necticut; and as they were dissatisfied with their apportion- ment of the war taxes, levied to carry on the French and In- dian wars, they were ready to join their sister towns in seced- ing from Massachusetts. The towns were persistent, and Con- necticut being willing, the General Assembly in 1749 voted to receive them. Notification was sent to the Massachusetts authorities of Connecticut's action; to which they sarcas- tically replied that it was contrary to the royal will, and they must suffer the consequences. The agreement of 1713 had never been confirmed by the King, and Connecticut author-
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ized her agent in the old country to prevent the royal consent, knowing that Massachusetts would use her utmost exertion to obtain it. England was at this period engaged in the Seven Years' War, and there is no evidence that the controversy was ever brought before the Crown; neither complainant being anxious to have the home government meddling with its private affairs. Commissioners were appointed by Con- necticut in 1752, who reported that Massachusetts held ter- ritory that did not rightfully belong to her.
This settled the matter for the time being, though as late as 1768 the towns were warned by Massachusetts not to pay any tax to Connecticut ; an attempt was made by Massachu- setts to enforce her claims in 1804, but she finally abandoned the dispute, and the present line was established in 1822-26. There was left, however, the indentation in the present town of Granby, which remains as a memorial to those enterpris- ing mathematicians, Woodward and Saffrey, who ran the line in 1642 by taking a ship around Cape Cod and up the Con- necticut River; they tried to establish a point in a direct line from three miles south of the Charles River in the eastern portion of Massachusetts Bay Colony, and got it eight miles too far south.
The twelve towns in the northwestern part of the colony had a population of about ten thousand, and the General Assembly in 1751 incorporated them into a county by the name of Litchfield. The territory comprising the town of Stafford was ordered to be laid out by the assembly in 1718; the following year it was named, and a committee was ap- pointed to sell the lands and place the purchase money in the county's treasury. From this time there are several men- tions of the town in the colonial records, and the census taken in 1756 gives it a population of one thousand, but there is no
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record of its incorporation. The General Assembly in 1755 ordered that a tax report should be made of the town, and in the list submitted to that body in October 1756, the asses- ment appears for the first time. The town was not repre- sented in the General Assembly till the session held in May 1757.
A tract of land on the northern borders was sold at public vendue by the colony in 1742; settlement began on the terri- tory two years later; it was granted town privileges in 1758 under the name of Norfolk. Residents of Hartford and Windsor in 1733 purchased of the colony the region west of Suffield; the locality was first settled in 1753 and was incor- porated as a town in 1761 by the name of Hartland.
By 1762 all the soil of the colony had been di- vided into towns, and in the formation of new civic divisions it became necessary to carve them out of existing townships. In 1767 a part of Middletown was erected into a town un- der the name of Chatham, from the Earl of Chatham, the popular idol at this period, owing to his espousing the Ameri- can cause against the right of Parliament to tax the colonies. The same year Redding was taken from Fairfield and in- vested with town privileges; the town was originally spelt Reading, like its English prototype, but was later phonetic- ally changed into its present orthography. That portion of the town of Windsor on the east bank of Connecticut River was formed into a township in 1768, and called East Windsor. Hartford patentees of a grant in the northern part of Litchfield County were given the right by the General Assembly to incorporate into a township in 1771, under the name of Winchester; the town was not represented in the legislature until 1781; in which year it paid its first State tax.
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Connecticut was now divided into seventy-two towns; she had passed the days of being sparsely settled. Her popula- tion, which in 1774 amounted to nearly 200,000, was cen- tralizing, partially due to the swarming of her people to the industrial centres, that even before the Revolution had shown manifestations of future growth. New Haven was first in the number of her people, Norwich being in the second place. We have evidence that agriculture was the important occu- pation of the colonists, as Farmington held the third place. The other larger towns were New London fourth, Stratford fifth, Stonington sixth, Woodbury seventh, and Hartford eighth. The time had arrived when more momentous events than the formation of towns were to interest the colonists of Connecticut. The rumble of war was heard in the distance, and Connecticut was to take her place shoulder to shoulder with her sister colonies, in a war for independence. She was to throw off her mantle of colonyship, to be afterwards in- vested with the more dignified rank of State, and to perform her part in the creation of a new nation.
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CHAPTER XVIII BOUNDARY TROUBLES WITH RHODE ISLAND AND NEW YORK
C ONNECTICUT, secure in her rights of govern- ment under her Royal Charter, turned her at- tention to the permanent establishment of her boundary lines. The difficulties of the settle- ment with Massachusetts Colony as to her northern boundary have already been explained. Her neigh- bor on the east, while smaller in area than Massachusetts, was fully as energetic and pugnacious in maintaining her rights; the disputed territory lay between the Mystic River and Narragansett Bay; Connecticut based her claims on her conquest of the Pequots and her charter, and Massachusetts on her assistance in subduing the Pequots. The New Eng- land Congress, ignoring all rights of Rhode Island, had de- cided that the Mystic River should be the boundary line be- tween Massachusetts and Connecticut. The constant dispute as to jurisdiction deterred settlers from locating on the tract, as it was considered the equivalent of buying a lawsuit.
On receipt of her charter, Connecticut disregarded the decision of the New England Congress; and also the agree- ment made in London by Governor John Winthrop, her agent, with Dr. John Clark, the agent of Rhode Island, which was, that all difficulties were to be settled by arbitration in that city, and that the Pawcatuck River should constitute the boundary line between the two colonies. (The "Narra- gansett River" of the old patent undoubtedly meant Provi- dence River; but as this would nearly annihilate Rhode Island, it was agreed that whenever the name occurred it should be taken to mean Pawcatuck.) The charter received from the King by the Rhode Island Colony, fifteen months after the granting of the Connecticut charter, embraced the Narragansett country. Connecticut repudiated the agree- ment of Winthrop, claiming that he had exceeded his in-
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structions and authority. In 1663 the General Assembly granted privileges to planters of settling on the disputed tract, appointed officers to administer the laws, and named it Wickford. This section Rhode Island stigmatized as "legal- ized robbery," and in March of the following year proposed fixing a line between the two colonies; later in the year Con- necticut appointed commissioners, but they failed to agree, and nothing was accomplished.
In 1665 the Royal Commission, at whose head was the offensive Edward Randolph, without being petitioned, and in their despotic way without the hearing of any testimony, de- creed that neither colony had any claim to the territory; they erected it into a separate province, to which they gave the name of King's Province, and decided that it belonged solely to his Majesty. To this decision Connecticut entered no pro- test, but ignored it, and it faded into oblivion.
For several years the boundary question was left in abey- ance, but in 1669 Rhode Island offered to leave the matter to a legal tribunal. Three commissioners were appointed from each colony; they met at New London the following year, but after two days' session no amicable arrangements were effected; this caused petty contentions on the disputed terri- tory to break forth afresh, but the commencement of King Philip's war turned the attention of Connecticut to more weighty and important matters. At the close of this war, in which Rhode Island had taken no active part, she again ob- jected to Connecticut's jurisdiction over what she claimed to be her territory. The latter advocated new claims to the dis- puted lands, based on her troops accomplishing the expulsion of the Narragansetts, and complacently offered to compro- mise by accepting what is now East Greenwich as her eastern boundary. This Rhode Island indignantly refused to con-
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sider ; and in the summer of 1677 a court assembled at Paw- tucket, and rendered a verdict favoring Connecticut's occu- pancy of the lands. Rhode Island then appealed to the King; a commission was appointed, and on her refusal to allow them to sit at Wickford they adjourned to Boston. This commission decided that the government of the Narragansett country should be in the hands of Connecticut, which decision was forwarded to England but was never confirmed by the Privy Council, and therefore never considered binding by Rhode Island. The advent of Sir Edmund Andros into New England politics reversed all former decisions ; he suspended Rhode Island's charter, changed the names of her towns, and caused confusion to reign in the Narragansett country, repu- diated Connecticut's claim to the territory, and guaranteed Rhode Island's jurisdiction. She continued to hold it despite the decision of the Attorney-General of England, in 1696, in favor of Connecticut.
This stubborn resistance on the part of Rhode Island, and Connecticut's own unwillingness to have her claim adjudicated by the mother country, had its effect in modifying the posi- tion of the latter. At the close of the seventeenth century, the Board of Trade and Plantations, to whom the matter had been referred, requested the Earl of Bellomont, the Roy- al Governor of New York and Massachusetts, to act as arbi- trator in accomplishing a friendly settlement of all differ- ences. His efforts were unsuccessful, and he suggested that the matter be referred to the home government for a final adjustment; this hastened Connecticut's action, as her op- ponent was fighting for very existence. Should Rhode Island lose the disputed territory, it would so greatly curtail her area that she would have but little left to live for. Connecticut had larger and greater interests at stake, and at her sugges-
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tion commissioners were again appointed by the colonies. They agreed in May 1703 that the middle channel of the Pawcatuck River, from salt water to the mouth of the branch called the Ashway, and thence in a straight line through a point twenty miles due west of the extremity of Warwick Neck, in Narragansett Bay, due north to Massachusetts line, should constitute the bounds between the two colonies. There was no actual survey made at the time, but it was the boun- dary line for which Rhode Island had always contended. It was almost a score of years before commissioners were again appointed to complete the arrangements, but as usual they disagreed.
The sturdy little colony of Rhode Island again appealed to the King for life and justice, and her opponent put for- ward her old claim for the whole territory. The Board of Trade and Plantations, after hearing the testimony, decided that while Rhode Island did not seem to have any legal right, morally she was the true possessor of the lands in question ; and recommended that the charters of both colonies be taken away from them and they be annexed to the colony of New Hampshire. This recommendation created the greatest alarm in Connecticut, and she took hasty action to appoint commissioners with full powers to settle the differences with her small but determined opponent; this commission fol- lowed in the footsteps of its predecessors, and no definite ar- rangements were consummated.
The Privy Council in 1727 recommended that the agree- ment of 1703 should stand; it was so settled between the two colonies, and in the following year the line was surveyed, and excepting a slight straightening in 1840 it is now the present boundary between the States, which it took sixty-five years of quarreling to establish.
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The boundary disputes between Connecticut and New York were very long, very tedious, and very bitter. The Duke of York's title to New Netherlands was derived from the purchase of all the grants that Lord Sterling had received from the extinct Council of Plymouth; which he strengthened by a charter from his royal brother, under date of March 12, 1664, in which the eastern boundary was the west bank of the Connecticut River. As before stated, the western boundary of Connecticut, in accordance with the charter, was the shore of the South Seas, that is to say, the Pacific Ocean.
An expedition was dispatched from England with six hun- dred soldiers and four commissioners-viz., Colonel Rich- ard Nicholls, Colonel George Cartwright, Sir Robert Carr, and Samuel Maverick-to seize upon New Netherlands for the Duke of York. The territory was surrendered by the Dutch without bloodshed, and Colonel Richard Nicholls be- came Royal Governor of New Netherlands, which was re- named New York. Connecticut assumed a more pliant and diplomatic course in dealing with the brother of the King than when negotiating with her sister colonies; that she ulti- mately preserved her present boundaries was largely due to the.sagacity and policy of Governor Winthrop, and the spirit of justice and friendship exhibited by the first English gover- nor of the province of New York.
The news of the English supremacy at New Netherlands caused alarm to spread throughout New England. At the next session of the Connecticut General Assembly, com- missioners were appointed to convey to his Majesty's Honorable Commission their congratulations on the successful termination of their expedition, and request that measures should be taken to establish the boundaries between the col- ony and the Duke's patent. The Commonwealth at this time
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claimed jurisdiction over New Haven Colony, Stamford, and the eastern end of Long Island, and in fact had laid out an ex- tensive province. The commission made but little progress ; and while an arrangement was drawn up that the boundary line should run parallel with and twenty miles east of the Hudson River, it was never executed. The Mamaroneck river, which was about thirteen miles east of Westchester, was agreed upon as the eastern point from which a line was to be run north-northwest to the line of Massachusetts, and was to constitute the boundary between the two colonies. No survey was ever made, though Connecticut often requested to have the line run. She surrendered her jurisdiction over Long Island, and also relinquished to New York Fisher's Island, which had been granted in 1641 to Winthrop.
The towns of Southold and Southampton on Long Island -against the wishes of their inhabitants, who resented the transfer-passed from the control of the colony. Southold's connection had been of short duration, having been annexed with the New Haven Colony. Southampton had been under the jurisdiction of Connecticut since 1644, though taxes had been levied on the township only since the obtaining of the Royal Charter. The boundary agreement of 1664 was never confirmed by the King, who dissolved the commission, and therefore New York refused to abide by it.
Colonel Nicholls was succeeded by the Right Honorable Francis Lovelace, Esq. In the summer of 1668 these gentle- men paid a visit to Governor Winthrop, and through their united exertions a post-road was established in 1763 between New York and Boston, and a monthly mail was instituted. This was the germ of the postal service of the United States, and was supplemented in 1727 by Ebenezer Hurd riding as courier between Saybrook and New York; he ended his
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forty-eight years of service by bringing news of the battle of Lexington to the New York authorities.
The war between England and Holland broke out afresh in 1672; a Dutch fleet entered New York Harbor the follow- ing year and recaptured the province. A new regime was instituted in New York by the retrocession from the Dutch in 1674, and the granting of a new patent to the Duke of York in the same year, preserving to the utmost the limits of the former charter. This change of affairs introduced into the history of Connecticut a gentleman who was to play an important part in her future annals. Major Edmund An- dros was appointed provisional governor of New York; he was at this time in the prime of life, being about thirty-seven years of age, and but lately married. He had early chosen the profession of arms, and was a favorite with the King and his brother; while of imperious disposition and high temper, he was a public officer of ability, and noted for his spotless integrity and purity of life. One of the first acts of the new government was to forward to Connecticut a copy of the Duke of York's patent, demanding their submission to its boundaries; this was accompanied by a threat that if Connecticut refused to allow the west bank of the Connecticut River as a boundary line, Andros would invade her terri- tory. This aroused a state of rebellion in the colony; and though King Philip's war was then in progress, the govern- ment prepared to resist such an attack.
Andros sailed from New York, and on receipt of this news, the authorities dispatched troops to garrison Saybrook and New London; the commandant at the former fortification was Captain Thomas Bull. On the ninth of June 1675 an armed fleet was seen approaching the fort; the command- ing officer, by instructions from the colonial authorities,
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was to advise Major Andros that Connecticut, while she ap- preciated his assistance, needed no aid in vanquishing her In- dian foes. Captain Bull was ordered to keep the British flag flying, and to resist the landing of Andros' force; to avoid striking the first blow, but to act on the defensive.
It was on the morning of the twelfth of July that Major Andros requested permission to land, which was acceded to by Captain Bull if for the purpose of negotiating a treaty, for such was his instruction from the governor and council. This proposal was haughtily rejected by Andros, who at- tempted to read the Duke of York's patent and the Duke's commission to himself, which gave him his pretended au- thority. To the reading of these documents Bull objected in a strenuous manner; and so persistent were his efforts that Andros, seeing it would be idle to attempt to overawe the in- habitants, departed, with the sarcastic remark to the noble commander of the fort that "it was a pity that his horns were not tipped with silver."
Universal alarm was created throughout the colony by these acts; and the Assembly hastened to send representatives to England to lay their complaints before the Crown. An- dros refused to recognize the boundary agreement of 1664, claiming that, even if it had been confirmed, it was abro- gated by the new patent. Warrants for arrest were issued by New York authorities against the inhabitants of Rye, Green- wich, and Stamford. The former town had been settled by the English, but in 1650 was placed under the jurisdiction of the Dutch; after obtaining her Royal Charter, Connecti- cut claimed the territory ; it was created a plantation in 1665, and some years later Bedford accepted the jurisdiction of the colony.
These troubles led to correspondence between the gover-
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nors, which resulted in the appointment in 1683 of commis- sioners to adjust the boundaries. The New York authorities contended that the line should be twenty miles east of the Hudson River; and threatened, if this was not allowed, that they would claim the territory to the west bank of the Con- necticut River. It was agreed by the commission, of which the Connecticut representatives were Robert Treat, Nathan Gold, John Allyn, and William Pitkin, on the 28th of No- vember, 1683, "that the starting point of the line should be Lyon's Point at the mouth of Byram Brook, following this stream to a wading place that was crossed by a public road; thence eight miles north-northwest into the country; thence easterly to a line parallel to the first, beginning twelve miles east of Lyon's Point as the Sound runs, and to a place in that line eight miles from the Sound; thence along this north- northwest line to a point twenty miles from the Hudson; thence northerly to the Massachusetts border by a line paral- lel to Hudson River in every point." If the quadrilateral formed at the southwest corner of Connecticut, including the present towns of Greenwich, Stamford, New Canaan, Da- rien, and parts of Wilton and Norwalk, came to any point nearer than twenty miles to the Hudson, the other northerly lines were to be run far enough to the eastward to give to New York an equivalent tract of land. This was the cause of the formation on Connecticut's western boundary of an in- denture known as the "Ridgefield Angle," and the fact that the boundary line as it runs inclines to the east.
The strip of territory assigned to New York was one and three-quarters miles in width, was called the "Oblong" or "Equivalent Lands," and comprised about 61,440 acres. "Equivalent Lands" was a misnomer for the quitclaim New York gave to the towns bordering on Long Island Sound;
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Connecticut settled them, they were within her charter limits, and if they came within twenty miles of the Hudson it did not lessen her right of government. New York had obtained the line she contended for, the jurisdiction over the towns of Rye and Bedford, and also a large tract of land to which she had no moral or legal right. The line was surveyed as far as the "Ridgefield Angle"; but owing to the troublesome times in England, it was not confirmed till 1700.
The towns of Rye and Bedford were not loyal to New York, and in 1697 they rebelled; and until the confirmation of the boundary line were represented in and acted with the Connecticut government. An attempt was made to survey the whole line in 1725 ; but a dispute arose, and it was not till six years later that it was established. It was resurveyed by New York in 1860, agreed upon by both States in 1878-79, and ratified by Congress in 1880-81.
The death of Governor Winthrop occurred in the midst of Connecticut's boundary disputes. He was succeeded by William Leete, who had been Deputy Governor since 1669. Governor Leete was born in Dodington, England, in 1612 or 1613, and was a descendant of an ancient family who appear in the public records as landowners as early as the thirteenth century. Educated as a lawyer, he became a clerk at the Bish- op's Court at Cambridge; his sympathies were so aroused by the cruelties imposed on the Puritans that he was led to espouse their cause. He was Governor of New Haven at the time of the union of the Colonies; on his election in 1677 he removed to Hartford, where he resided during his occu- pancy of the executive chair, to which he was re-elected for six consecutive terms. Governor Leete was noted for his integ- rity, and was a very popular official; his death occurred in 1683.
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