USA > Connecticut > Fairfield County > New Canaan > Readings in New Canaan history > Part 8
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hire somebody. In other words, the earliest colonists did not just go to America, they were sent.
There were various sorts of people who were anxious or willing to emigrate, though the motives that influenced them were complex and inevitably overlapped. It is probable that religious persecution has been over-stressed, but religious dissent was certainly a vital factor. Then, too, from causes partly religious, partly political, partly economic, there was, in England, at the turn of the 17th century, a growing spirit of individualism, a hatred of restraint, that lured many to seek the adventure of a new world. There were unemployed artisans and workmen who cared little where they went, so long as they were paid. Finally, and perhaps above all the rest, was the age- old hunger for land, a hunger that could never be satisfied in an England where the land was closely held, much of it not available for tillage. To all or most of these people America was a promise and a hope, and the promoters found no great difficulty in obtaining recruits for their colonization or trading schemes.
A more or less typical example is to be found in the passenger list of the Mayflower, a ship financed by one of the companies. On board were "Saints" and "Strangers": radical Separatists and conservative Anglicans; masters and servants; stockholders and hired men. The spiritual head of the Saints was Elder William Brewster. Among the Strangers and hired hands were Captain Miles Standish and John Alden.
The Indians themselves were a considerable influence on coloniza- tion. Returning from a voyage in 1605, Captain George Waymouth took home, as a souvenir of his travels, five Indians from the Kennebec country of Maine. They excited much interest and proved to be good propagandists. Three of them were "seized upon" by Sir Ferdinado Gorges. He, too, became interested in America. Gorges, a professional soldier, spent a large part of his life and fortune in fostering colonization. In his later years he said that his contact with these Indians "must be acknowledged the means, under God, of putting on foot and giving life to all our plantations."
In November of 1620, while the Mayflower was still a week or so off the coast of America, the Great Seal of England was affixed to a patent creating the "Council Established at Plymouth, in the County of Devon, for the planting, ruling, ordering and governing of New-
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England in America." The patentees were limited to "persons of Honor or Gentlemen of blood," and included the Earl of Warwick, the Duke of Lenox, and other great names. The directing head was Sir Ferdinado Gorges. This Council proposed to grant lands to themselves or others who would send over colonists. Profits would come from the fees paid for these grants, from fishing licenses, and from the sale of fish, furs, lumber etc.
In this patent King James specified that the territory granted should be called "by the name of New-England." Thus did the name receive official status, though it had been enrolled in history when Captain John Smith engraved it on his map some years earlier.
Returning to our fishing village, in 1622 the Council for New Eng- land granted a license to a small group from Dorchester, England, sometimes known as the Bushrod Associates, authorizing them to seek a possible site for a plantation. They appear to have construed their license to include fishing rights as well, and by March 1624 this venture had grown into an association of over a hundred members. Its object was to set up a permanent base of operations that would enable their fishing to be carried on more economically than when based on England. The winter before, they had sent over a crew who had established a village on Cape Ann, not far from present Glouces- ter. When the ship returned to England in the autumn it left behind fourteen men to look after the equipment. In 1624 another ship went over, this time leaving some thirty people to tend equipment and to plant some crops.
The chief promoter of this association was the Rev. John White of Dorchester. White apparently was actuated by a dual motive: gaining a profit from the fish trade and carrying the Gospel to the heathen.
In 1625 a business reorganization took place. Roger Conant, brother of one of the members (and ancestor of President Conant of Harvard), was made general manager at Cape Ann; and John Old- ham, who had some knowledge of the Indians, was engaged to handle the fur trade. Both Conant and Oldham had recently left Plymouth Colony - Conant because he found its religious system not to his liking; Oldham by request. This John Oldham was a roving, obstrep- erous character who was always bobbing up at unexpected places;
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always asserting annoying claims to lands and licenses. Even his death was to be a cause of trouble to the colonies. His murder by Indians off Block Island was one of the contributing factors in the start of the Pequot War.
Conant assumed charge just in time to meet financial disaster. The ships of 1623-24 had arrived so late in the season the small catch showed a loss. The fishermen proved to be poor planters, the planters poor fishermen. Their best market was Spain, and now Spain and England were at war. Between high costs and low prices, by 1626 the Bushrod Associates were bankrupt.
While many of the Cape Ann company returned to England, Conant and a few others decided to stick it out. Searching for a site better adapted for a plantation, toward the end of the year they moved to Naumkeag (later Salem).
Back in England was the Rev. John White. White decided that even though fishing had failed, there might be another basis for a colony in New England - a colony based on religious rather than mercantile lines. White was not a Separatist as were many of those at Plymouth, nor even a non-conformist. White pictured a colony that could be a refuge for the more conservative Puritans.1 So he urged Conant to remain in New England while he, White, arranged to send supplies and endeavored to obtain a patent.
Enlisting the aid of persons able to meet the Council's requirement of "honor and blood", and the interest of some London merchants and East Anglian Puritans, White managed, in 1628, to obtain some sort of a patent and raise some money. The exact source and nature of this patent remains something of a mystery. Under it, however, was created an unincorporated stock company known as the New England Company. It was made up of about ninety members includ- ing Matthew Craddock and Sir Richard Saltonstall, wealthy London merchants, Issac Johnson, brother-in-law of the Earl of Lincoln, John Humfrey and John Endecott. Also included were Bushrod, White himself, and a few others of the old Dorchester company.
1 Over the course of 300 years the term "Puritan" has come to mean many things. It is here used to designate those who opposed the ritualism in the Church of England, considered by them to savor of "Popery"; who believed that essential truths in matters of the church were to be found in the Scriptures, not in the pro- nouncements of bishops. The great majority sought a reformation in the established church, not a separation from it.
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They were not all Puritans but they were bound together by religious sympathies. The ultimate aim of their proposed plantation was to "bring the Indians to a knowledge of the Gospel." The more imme- diate object was to ship men and supplies to Conant. In June of 1628 the Abigail sailed for Naumkeag carrying John Endecott, who was to supersede Conant, and about 40 workmen. One of these passengers was presumably Simon Hoyt, ancestor of all the Hoyts who were later to play an important part in the settlement of Nor- walk, Stamford and New Canaan.
Endecott, too, was faced with problems. There had been a pre- vious grant to a son of Gorges which was overlapped by the New England Company's patent. Now came John Oldham and two others with a claim based on that grant. Whether this claim was valid or not, Endecott and his associates were fearful of a flaw in their title and determined to seek a more secure patent.
Their quest, "with great cost, favor of personages of note & much labor," was highly successful. This new charter was not from the Council for New England, it was from the Crown itself. It passed the seals on March 4, 1629, and created the "Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay in New England." Thus the small, unimportant fishing village of five years earlier had grown into what was to be the largest and most powerful of all the New England Colonies.
The new charter gave the Massachusetts Bay Company something the New England Company had never had, namely, the right to rule and administer the territory granted. Craddock was elected president of the company, and John Endecott was named resident Governor. As soon as supplies could be collected and colonists recruited, five ships were made ready. The first of these, the Abigail or the George, set out in April, 1629, bearing a duplicate of the charter, and the others soon followed. They brought two or three hundred new settlers for Salem and for a second plantation that had been started at Charlestown.
So began what has been called the "Great Migration." For the next fifteen or twenty years the Atlantic was dotted with the white sails of ships that shuttled back and forth almost like ferry boats. It has been estimated that in those years over 20,000 people came to Massachusetts, with double that number going to other English colonies in Virginia, Bermuda, and the West Indies.
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In the late summer of 1629 the Massachusetts Bay Company under- went a reorganization that was to be far-reaching in its effects. The usual pattern for these stock companies provided for a president, several vice-presidents, a board of directors, and the body of stock- holders who would vote at stated stockholders' meetings. Only they did not use those terms. The president and vice-presidents were Governor and Deputy-Governors; the directors were called Assist- ants; stockholders were freemen; their meetings were called General Courts. Under the more usual procedure, colonists were more or less servants of the company, their affairs regulated by the Assistants and the General Courts back in England. But for Massachusetts Bay all this was to be changed.
At the instigation of a group headed by John Winthrop, a lawyer of note and lord of the manor of Groton, the company voted that the patent and the government of the plantation should be trans- ferred to New England. Thenceforward the Bay colonists were not to be a group of emigrants sent over to labor for and be controlled by a corporation back in England. On the contrary, the corporation itself was to emigrate, and the freemen, since they were the corpora- tion, would be working for themselves and, subject to the patent, governing themselves. In short, the business corporation was to become a commonwealth. With this change, the General Courts, while still nominally meetings of stockholders, took on the functions of a legislature. The Assistants (directors) became Magistrates who would control the colony between sessions of the Court. Later on, as the population increased and the towns spread out, each town would select Deputies to represent it in the General Courts.
Following this reorganization Winthrop was elected Governor of the company, and plans were made to fit out a new fleet. The first ship of the fleet to depart for New England sailed from Plymouth March 20, 1630. On board were about one hundred and forty men, women and children, mostly from Dorchester. The Rev. John White had come down to preach a farewell sermon. The ship was named the Mary and John, but was more commonly referred to as "Mr. Lud- low's vessel."
This Mr. Ludlow was Roger Ludlow, graduate of Oxford, bar- rister of the Inner Temple, member of a powerful Puritan family of Wiltshire. He had lately been elected an Assistant of the Massachu-
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setts Bay Company, and was being hurried off to New England in order "that his counsel and judgment might aid in preserving order, and found the social structure upon the surest basis." In the history of Connecticut the Mary and John and her sister ships are far more important than the more famous Mayflower.
Long before there ever was a New Canaan, Roger Ludlow was dead and buried in a forgotten grave. Yet the story of New Canaan is inextricably interwoven with Ludlow's life and works. Certainly no man played a greater role in the creation of Connecticut. It was Ludlow who was largely instrumental in the founding of Windsor, one of Connecticut's first settlements, and in the formation of the first government of the Three River Towns. It was Ludlow who founded Fairfield. And it was Ludlow who purchased from the Indians much of the land that became Norwalk.
Shortly after the departure of the Mary and John the rest of the fleet set sail. On board the flagship, the Arbella, was Governor Winthrop. In his custody the original charter journeyed to Massa- chusetts Bay. Although it was later annulled, it still hangs in the State House at Boston. The ships of the Winthrop fleet are now no more, but at Salem one may see a full-sized reproduction of the Arbella, anchored alongside a reconstruction of the first houses.
With the arrival of the last of the fleet - none other than the bat- tered old Mayflower - fifteen hundred new inhabitants were added to Massachusetts Bay. The first contingent at Salem and Charlestown had been largely workmen, but this new addition was a cross section of Puritan England. Opposition to the established church had grown into opposition to the king and his government. Puritanism had become a political as well as a religious dissent, and the new Puritan- ism cut across all social and economic lines. Winthrop's ships carried men of property and men who were forced to sell themselves into bondage in order to pay their passage. There were men of title and men of trade; ministers and merchants; gentry and yeomen; artisans and servants.
As one by one the ships discharged their passengers it became apparent that Salem and Charlestown could not hold all these people, and additional towns were laid out. The Ludlow group settled at the south side of the Bay, naming their town Dorchester. Nearby, a group under William Pynchon, later a founder of Springfield, settled
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Roxbury. North of the river Charles, Sir Richard Saltonstall estab- lished a plantation they called Watertown. Another new town, known simply as New Towne, was to be the capital. Eventually, however, Boston was given that honor, and New Towne was re- named Cambridge.
When these Puritan emigrants left England, a spokesman had disavowed any thought of Separatism. They were not separating from the established Church of England; they were separating only from what they termed its "corruptions." Once at the Bay, however, they were faced with a practical problem. They were in New Eng- land, the bishops in Old England. If they could not call on the bishops to organize their new churches they must do it themselves, and that, in effect, was Separatism. But since there was nothing else to do, they perforce went ahead and organized, refraining only from the use of the term Separatists. They referred to their churches as congrega- tions, and so became known as Congregationalists.
For many years to come, the Congregational Church was to be the established church of the Puritan colonial governments. Indeed, for some time in Massachusetts, and later in New Haven, it was the government. The General Court of Massachusetts, composed of the freemen, made the laws; the Magistrates, elected by the freemen, administered those laws. Only freemen could vote, and only members of the established church could be freemen. The Puritan point of view, as one writer has expressed it, was that God set up ministers to declare His will and magistrates to execute it. It was inevitable, therefore, that church and state should become, in practice, one and the same, and that the government should be a Congregationalist government.
THE THREE RIVER TOWNS
The story now turns from Massachusetts Bay westward toward a river. The Bay Colony had not been long established around Boston Neck when there were signs of discontent. If, as some have said, the Puritans came to New England to secure "religious freedom," there was little of it to be found at the Bay. When these people were still in England they had been non-conformists, many of them, and proud of it. But in New England they would countenance no deviation from
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their church. They pursued non-conformity with a zeal almost reminiscent of the Spanish Inquisition.
Only members of an established church had any voice in the gov- ernment and, under the religious requirements that were imposed, only a relative few could qualify for church membership. To a great many of the people the rigid oligarchic control of the magistrates and the clergy made Massachusetts Bay an unsatisfactory place to live in.
Even the church members sometimes rebelled. When John Cotton preached a sermon to prove that God had given the Magistrates a vested interest in their offices, and intended them to be re-elected for life, the freemen promptly deposed Winthrop and elected Thomas Dudley as Governor. While this was probably no improvement, it indicated an undercurrent.
After 1633 the leading spirit in this growing ferment was the Rev. Thomas Hooker. The son of an English yeoman, Hooker was a graduate of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, sometimes called "the cradle of Puritanism." He had held a church at Chelmsford but had been forced to flee to Holland. Chelmsford was the shire town for Essex, and a Puritan stronghold. A large part of the county was owned by Lord Rich, father of the Earl of Warwick whose name appears again and again in the history of New England. The Puritan influence reached high places.
A number of Chelmsford people were living at New Towne, and when Hooker arrived at the Bay in 1633 he became their minister. John Cotton might thunder that "democracy is no fit government for church or commonwealth," but Hooker believed in a more democratic, a more liberal church and state. Within a short time Hooker had persuaded his congregation that their only hope was to seek a new home where they might establish a church-state more to their liking. Moreover, his influence spread rapidly to the neighbor- ing towns, particularly Dorchester and Watertown.
No doubt there were other motives behind the desire for a change. The Bay towns were becoming crowded, the land was poor. These are motives that have pushed Americans westward for three hundred years. So there was some basis for Hooker's petition for permission to depart. Tactfully omitting any expression of dissatisfaction with the government, the petition alleged merely the need for more room for their cattle.
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If a new, a larger and more fertile place of residence was desired, the solution was ready at hand, and eyes for some time had been turning toward the Long River to the west. The Connecticut Valley was no unknown territory to the English settlers. The Dutch had sung its praises ten years back. In 1631 the old sachem Wahginnacut of Podunk had journeyed eastward and, with pomp and circum- stance, had called on both Plymouth and Boston. In an effort to enlist the aid of the English against the Pequots, he had described the lush lands that lay along the river. The Pequots, too, had offered to give up river rights for English aid.
It was Plymouth rather than Boston that made the first real move. After a year or so of trading trips they determined on something more permanent. In September of 1633 a small ship from Plymouth sailed up the Connecticut under the command of William Holmes. To his surprise, at Suckiaug (Hartford) Holmes found a Dutch fort, com- plete with troops and cannon. This the Dutch had named the House of Hope. The commander ordered Holmes to turn back, asserting the sovereignty of the Netherlands and ownership of everything in sight, by reason of a purchase from the Pequots. Holmes replied that neither the Pequots nor the Dutch had any rights to anything; that he was going up river. And up river he went.
Holmes had on board what was probably the first pre-fabricated house in America. Landing at the mouth of the Tunxis (Farmington), on lands previously purchased of the Indians, they set up their house, and built a palisade. Wethersfield later claimed, still claims, that this was a mere trading post, and that theirs was Connecticut's first town. The fact remains that when the Plymouth ship departed in that late summer of 1633, it left the first English settlement on the river.
Plymouth's dream of a Connecticut plantation was soon shattered. It was not the Indians that caused the trouble, nor was it the Dutch - it was the English from Massachusetts Bay. After some opposition and delay, permission had been granted to the Dorchester and Water- town people to start plantations along the Connecticut, and appar- ently New Towne assumed it applied to them as well. Just when the first Dorchester migrants appeared at Mettianuck (Windsor) is not certain, but in a letter dated July, 1635, Jonathan Brewster, now head of the Plymouth settlement, was complaining that newcomers were
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arriving almost daily and, what was worse, wanted the same land Plymouth had already chosen.
The spiritual head of the Dorchester movement was the Rev. John Warham; the active head was Roger Ludlow. Ludlow had recently been voted out as Deputy-Governor of Massachusetts but had been engaged in superintending the fortification of Boston harbor against a threatened invasion by the English to seize the charter. Now, in June of 1635, here he was sailing up the Connecticut in charge of an advance party from Dorchester. Brushing aside Brewster's objec- tions, Ludlow led his company to the great meadow just north of the mouth of the Tunxis. Sending their pinnace back to the Bay for baggage and supplies, they set out in canoes to see if they could find a better site up stream.
As if Mettianuck was not already sufficiently congested, while the Dorchester people were up river another ship arrived. This was the Christian owned by Sir Richard Saltonstall. On board were Richard Stiles, some of his family, and about twenty workmen and appren- tices. Saltonstall, a member of the Massachusetts Bay Company, was also one of a group of Lords and Gentlemen who claimed ownership of the Connecticut country. Apparently planning an estate for himself that would also constitute an act of possession on behalf of the claimants, Saltonstall had sent Stiles, a master carpenter, to start construction of some houses.
Stiles, his three brothers, a sister, and the wife of John Stiles, landed on the great meadow, and there the workmen began to lay out houses. Presently the Dorchester people, having failed to find a spot more to their liking, returned to Mettianuck and claimed the meadow by pre-emption. Stiles argued, but Dorchester had the force of numbers so the Stiles group moved farther up stream. In a letter to John Winthrop, Jr., Saltonstall (from London) complained of the injury he had received at the hands of Ludlow and the rest. Stiles, he said, did not go ahead with the houses because he "darst not"; the Dorchester people "discharged my worke men . . . and resisted Stiles, slighteing me with many unbeseeming words."
Perhaps it was common adversity that enabled these three con- flicting groups to carry on without open warfare. Later that summer Connecticut was visited by a hurricane of a severity probably not equalled until 1938.
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All that summer and the next, settlers from Dorchester continued to arrive in increasing numbers. Plymouth Colony abandoned its hope of a settlement on the river and, in 1637, sold out to Dorchester, though Brewster remained as a resident for some years. The Lords and Gentlemen never arrived. Saltonstall, too, abandoned plans for a home in New England. His sons, however, remained in Massachu- setts, and among Sir Richard's descendents were Governors of both Massachusetts and Connecticut. The Stiles brothers and about a dozen of the workmen simply stayed on and became settlers on their own account. Nearly 150 years later Ezra Stiles, a great-great- grandson of John, was to become president of Yale College.
Meantime, in the summer of 1633, the ubiquitous John Oldham and John Hall from Watertown had travelled overland to Pyquog (later Wethersfield), and planted a crop. The next year Oldham's Nine Adventurers arrived to make their home on the river. One of these, Andrew Ward, later appears as a founder of Stamford.
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