USA > Connecticut > Fairfield County > New Canaan > Readings in New Canaan history > Part 9
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In 1635 the first of the New Towne group arrived at Suckiaug (Hartford) and started to build not far from the Dutch fort, (the House of Hope.) The next summer they were followed by Thomas Hooker and the main body of about one hundred who marched overland, driving their cattle, and widening the old Indian trail to accommodate Mrs. Hooker's litter. Among these New Towne migrants were Nathaniel Ely, Richard Olmstead, Matthew Marvin and other founders of Norwalk.
The Hartford citizens and the Dutch remained not very friendly neighbors for nearly twenty years, when the Dutch abandoned the fort and departed. Even nature has been unkind to the House of Hope. Dutch Point, where it stood, is also gone now, eaten away by years of river flow and flood.
By late 1636, then, there were three new settlements along the river. Actually Springfield made a fourth but, after an extended war of words and a survey, it was found that Springfield was in Massachu- setts. The other towns, while not geographically in Massachusetts, were still in the Bay orbit to some extent. In connection with their departure the Massachusetts General Court appointed a commission, headed by Roger Ludlow, to serve as a governing body for the term of one year. This commission sat as a General Court for the three towns - still called Dorchester, Watertown and New Towne.
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At the end of the prescribed year they severed all relations with the parental towns at the Bay. Adopting the names "Windsor, Wythersfeild and Harteford Towne," they established a General Court of their own. (After 1697 it would be called the General Assembly).
The River Towns were not yet a colony or a commonwealth. They were, in fact, nothing - nothing but neighboring plantations, loosely bonded together for their mutual well-being. They had no laws, no framework of government. Other colonies existed under some sort of charter or patent that gave them a framework of gov- ernment, but the River Towns had cut themselves off from Massachusetts Bay and, as yet, had no charter of their own. The Con- necticut of 1637 had no legal existence, not even a name - it just was.
Nothing of this deterred them from going ahead with their affairs. On May 1, 1637, representatives from the several towns met at a General Court in Hartford. The first action taken was to declare war against the Pequots, and impose a draft. The oldest and most power- ful of nations could have done no more.
After an unavoidable delay on account of the war, attention was turned to matters of government. At a session of the General Court in the winter of 1638-39 the Court approved and adopted "The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut." The preamble makes plain how they came to be where they were. No Council of the Crown, no stock company in London had put them there. .... "it hath pleased the almighty God by the wise disposition of his divine providence so to order and dispose of things that we the Inhabitants and Resi- dents of Windsor, Harteford and Wethersfield are now co-habiting and dwelling in and upon the River of Conectecotte and the Lands thereunto adjoining."
This document was, in effect, a constitution. It stated that Wind- sor, Hartford and Wethersfield were now a single state or common- wealth. Carried forward into the charter of 1662, and amended somewhat after the Revolution, the substance of the Fundamental Orders served as a basis for the government of the commonwealth until a new State constitution was adopted in 1818. The records do not show who was the author of the Orders but without doubt many of the leaders had a part in it. While the matter was under discussion it was the Rev. Thomas Hooker who preached a sermon on the thesis
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that "the sovereign power of all authority is founded in the consent of the people." The final draft of the Orders, indicating the hand and mind of one trained in the law, is generally attributed to Roger Ludlow.
The Fundamental Orders provided for a general election at which citizens, without regard to church membership, would vote for Governor and Magistrates. The towns would elect Deputies (repre- sentatives) to the General Courts. If the Governor failed to call a session of the General Court, the people could call one. (Pointing towards a legislature of two houses, an amendment in 1644 provided that all acts should have a majority vote of both the Magistrates and the Deputies). There was no question about the sovereignty that was to rule. There is not one word about fealty to England; not one about Massachusetts Bay. In matters spiritual they acknowledged the supremacy only of God. As to civil matters, these were in the hands of the General Courts, "in which General Courts shall consist the supreme power of the commonwealth." Three small plantations, aggregating less than a thousand souls, had formed themselves into an independent republic. "It was," says one eminent historian, speaking of the Fundamental Orders, "the first written constitution known to history, that created a government."
Some years later Ludlow, at the request of the Court, supplemen- ted the Fundamental Orders by creating a code of laws. Of its 73 titles, fifty eight were in use two centuries later, and it is still cited as the Ludlow Code of 1650.
The Lords and Gentlemen might accuse the infant Connecticut of trespass; the King might charge them with being of a "factious disposition;" England might look on their constitution as a mere want of government, their church as a Separatist church; but the River Towns knew where they stood and were unafraid. They had come to America, Roger Ludlow said, "to establish the Lord Jesus in his Kingly Throne, as much as in us lies, here in his churches, & to maynteine the common cause of his gospell with our lives & estates; and whereas wee knowe that our profession will finde fewe frends uppon the face of the earth, if occasion serve, & therefore unlikely to have any aide or succour from forraine parts, if our neede should soe require, it is our wisdom therefore to improve what wee have, to walke close with our God, & to combine and unite our selves to
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walke & live peacably & lovingly togeather, that soe, if there be cause, wee may joine harts & hands to maynteine the common cause aforesaide, & to defend our privileges & freedomes wee nowe enjoye, against all opposers."
FAIRFIELD AND NORWALK
The path of the story next turns shoreward. Ludlow's stay in Windsor was brief, though he continued to be an important figure in the colony. He failed to win the Governor's chair, but from 1637 to 1654 he was always either Deputy Governor or a Magistrate. He was one of Connecticut's two commissioners to the confederation known as the United Colonies of New England. He was even a dele- gate with Hooker to an ecclesiastical synod at Boston. Perhaps it was the very one for which the Massachusetts General Court passed this resolution: "The Court think it convenient that order be given to the auditor to send 12 gallons of sack and six gallons of white wine as a small testimony of the Court's respect to the reverend assembly of elders at Cambridge."
The indirect cause of Ludlow's removal from Windsor, and his founding of Fairfield, was the Pequot War. After Captain Mason and his small army had destroyed the Pequot stronghold at Narra- gansett Bay, the survivors fled westward. Ludlow joined Mason at Saybrook, and they took up the pursuit along the coast. The final act was the Great Swamp Fight, now marked by a boulder, near South- port. It was while scouting on this march that Mason and Ludlow discovered "Unquowa beyond Pequannocke." Greatly impressed with the region, Ludlow soon returned with a few settlers from Windsor. In 1639 he obtained leave from the General Court to start a new plantation. Apparently the Court expected this plantation to be at Pequannocke (now Bridgeport) but Ludlow had other ideas. Hav- ing purchased land from the Indians, he took up his abode in the "fair fields of Unquowa." To this new settlement he gave the name Fairfield.
Fairfield was now the Connecticut frontier. To the west were the unfriendly Dutch, and always there were the Indians. Ludlow decided to set up a sort of private buffer state against Fairfield's enemies, and arranged a further purchase. He was probably a man of
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means but in any event the price was not excessive. The tract extended from the Saugatuck to the "Norruck" River, and as far inland as a man could walk in a day. The deed recites the consid- eration: Eight fathom of wampum, six coates, tenn hatchets, tenn hoes, tenn knives, tenn scisors, tenn jewesharps, tenn fathom Tobac- koe, three kettles, and tenn looking glasses. About the same time Captain Patrick, an associate of Mason and Ludlow in the Pequot War, purchased the lands west of the river.
For some ten years these tracts that were to become Norwalk remained a wilderness save, perhaps, for an occasional settler on the coast. Whether Ludlow sought planters to open it up, or whether he was solicited by people in search of a new home, does not appear. Certainly those who finally came must have been his friends or acquaintances, as most of them were from Hartford.
In June of 1650 Ludlow entered into an agreement with Nathaniel Ely, Richard Olmstead and others. Ely and Olmstead agreed to "mowe and stacke some Hay this winter," preparatory to planting crops the next season; to bring families to inhabit the place, none of whom should be "obnoxious to the publique good of the common- wealth of Connecticut;" and to invite an orthodox minister. Ludlow, on his part, agreed to surrender his purchase for the price it had cost him, fixed at {15.
It is not known just when the first settlers arrived at Norwalk but it was presumably in 165 1-2 because by 1653 Olmstead was in Hart- ford as Norwalk's first Deputy, and there was comment over his delay in appearing.
Neither Ludlow nor Patrick ever lived in Norwalk. Patrick was busy starting a plantation at Greenwich. There he became involved in a series of quarrels with the Dutch and was finally killed by a Dutch officer. Ludlow had reserved lots for his sons, indicating that he intended to stay in Fairfield, but in 1654 he left Conncticut, never to return. There have been many versions as to where he went and why, most of the early ones erroneous. It is now reasonably certain that one motive for his departure was a summons from Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell was scornful of the wilderness of America, and had been trying to get many of the leading Puritans to return to England, or to settle in Ireland. Ludlow next appears in Dublin. There, as the
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records show, he held several offices under Cromwell's government. There, too, he probably died.
The first houses in Norwalk were clustered together in the section near the present East Norwalk railroad station. As time went on the first families grew, new families arrived, and the settlement began to spread out into the surrounding territory. Many were attracted by the hill country to the north and west. Within a matter of about three generations these upland dwellers, with their neighbors of north-east Stamford, would be numerous enough to be seeking a church society of their own - a society that would be named Canaan Parish.
NEW HAVEN
On the other side of New Canaan's family tree are Stamford and New Haven Colony.
The life span of New Haven Colony was a short one - only a quarter of a century - but during that period it was entirely distinct from the Colony of Connecticut. Founded as a single and independent town, New Haven became the capital of a federation, and finally a township of Connecticut.
The town of New Haven, like the Three River Towns, was an offspring of the Massachusetts Bay Company. On June 26, 1637, the ship Hector arrived at Boston with a group of Puritans, largely from London, under the leadership of the Rev. John Davenport and Theo- philus Eaton. Davenport, a graduate of Oxford, had been vicar of St. Stephen's, one of London's Puritan strongholds. He was a friend of Hooker and Cotton, and by them had undoubtedly been influenced in his non-conformist views. Eaton, son of a clergyman, was a wealthy London merchant and one of Davenport's parishioners. They had been schoolmates in their youth in Coventry. They had both been connected with the original Massachusetts Bay Company - Eaton as an incorporator, Davenport as a contributor. Now they were in New England intent on a plantation of their own.
The Hector's company, most of them from Davenport's former church, were welcomed at Boston with open arms. Davenport was one of the noted preachers of the day; Eaton was a man of position and influence in London; the group as a whole constituted the wealthiest company that had as yet arrived in New England. Such a group
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would be an important addition to Massachusetts, and the General Court invited them to settle anywhere they liked.
Although Davenport and Eaton had undoubtedly planned to settle in Massachusetts, they postponed immediate selection of a site. Eaton was a merchant. He pictured a plantation that would conform to Davenport's religious views, and that would support itself and grow prosperous by trade. This meant that they would need a good harbor, but all the harbors at the Bay were taken up. Moreover, before he left London Eaton had been involved in the first legal attack on the Bay charter, and it is possible that he lacked confidence in its political future. Perhaps a plantation outside of Massachusetts would be more suitable for their purpose.
Soldiers returning from the Pequot War had brought to Boston reports of a harbor west of Saybrook. Adriaen Block had named it Rodeberg - Red Mount Place - in 1614; the Indians called it Quinn- ipiac. So in August, only two months after their arrival, Eaton and a few others set out for Long Island Sound to explore.
Quinnipiac proved to be just what they wanted. Leaving seven men to retain possession and, presumably, to treat with the natives, they returned to Boston. There it was decided that it was too late in the year to start a new plantation, so the company remained in Boston during the winter, paying their share of the colony taxes. Then, on March 30, 1638, with most of the original company and some new recruits, including the Rev. Peter Pruden, the Hector sailed for Quinnipiac. After a voyage of eleven days they went ashore at the head of a small inlet, long since become solid land, near the present corner of George and College Streets. A few days later they all gathered under a great oak while Davenport preached a sermon on the Temptations in the Wilderness.
The infant settlement at Quinnipiac - soon to be called New Haven - had, like the Three River Towns, cut itself off from Massa- chusetts Bay. Like the Three River Towns it was without patent or charter of its own, and so had no framework of government. Shortly after their arrival they had adopted a Plantation Covenant in which it was agreed that they were to be governed solely by the laws of Moses. After some delay over establishing a more specific code, on June 4, 1639, about seventy planters met to "consult about settling civil government according to God."
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Save in the matter of omitting any reference of fealty to the English Crown, the form of government agreed upon had scarcely the remotest resemblance to the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut. Massachusetts Bay had been called a pious autocracy, but in their professions of piety, and in the autocracy of the rule they set up, New Haven out-Bostoned Boston. Only church members could vote. These members were to elect twelve men who, in their turn, would elect a General Court of "Seven Pillars." This Court would elect the Magistrates. Not the English common law but the "word of God" was to govern them. No basis for trial by jury was found in the Scriptures; no trial by jury was permitted in New Haven.
Davenport, of course, was selected as minister, and continued as such until the end of New Haven Colony. Eaton held office as Magis- trate, and later as Governor, until his death in 1658. Thus Davenport controlled the church, and Eaton was all but a dictator in civil affairs. "Moses and Aaron," Cotton Mather called them.
In 1656 a code of laws was adopted. It was patterned largely on John Cotton's code in Massachusetts. In the margin of a majority of the sections a passage of Exodus or Leviticus or some other Book of Scripture is cited as authority. The so-called Blue Laws of Connecti- cut have been considerably exaggerated but some of these New Haven laws were blue enough. To a modern America, where spend- ing a summer Sunday afternoon at a ball game or the beach is almost standard practice, one item of the code is of interest: "Whosoever shall profane the Lord's day or any part of it, either by sinful servile work, or unlawful sport, Recreation or otherwise . . . shall be pun- ished. ... But if the Court ... find that the sin was proudly, pre- sumptuously and with high hand committed .. . , such a person ... shall be put to death."
There were crimes against the Church as well as against the State. Not everyone in New Haven accepted John Davenport's theocratic pronouncements without protest. In the 1640s two famous trials took place. The accused were both women. What is more, they were the wives of the two richest merchants of the town. Nor is that all: one of them was the wife of the Governor.
Mrs. Eaton was the daughter of the Bishop of Chester. When Theophilus Eaton married her she was the widow of Thomas Yale, and she was soon to have a grandson named Elihu. Anne Eaton, one
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gathers, had a mind of her own. She was charged with several ecclesi- astical offenses. Though it does not appear in the indictment, she had apparently been guilty of an unforgivable sin - she walked out of meeting when she did not like the sermon. In 1644 Mrs. Eaton was tried convicted and excommunicated. She was permitted to remain in New Haven, even to attend church if she sat with outsiders, but after a few years she returned to England.
One day about two years after this trial, Mrs. Eaton and Mrs. Francis Brewster were calling on a friend, and they fell to discussing Mr. Davenport's latest sermon. Mrs. Eaton did not like it. Mrs. Brewster went further. She said that "her stomache wombled;" that she was "sermon sicke." This sort of conversation shocked a servant girl who happened to have her ear at the door, and she dashed off to notify the authorities. Lucy Brewster was summoned for trial but she was never punished. Perhaps the fact that Francis Brewster kept the only supply of wine in the town had something to do with it.
These Francis Brewsters, incidentally, have an interesting gene- alogical connection with Connecticut. Their son, Rev. Nathaniel Brewster, a member of Harvard's first graduating class, went back to England to preach. About 1655-6 he was sent to Dublin, so it is said, by Cromwell. There, presumably, he met the Ludlows, and within a year or so he had married Roger's daughter Sarah. After the Restora- tion of Charles II, Brewster became the minister at Setauket, Long Island. As far as is known, Sarah was the only one of Roger Ludlow's children who ever returned to America.
The Francis Brewster house that faced the New Haven Green, the Eaton mansion that was said to have housed thirty people and, in addition, served as the Capitol, are long since gone. Only the Green itself remains. Of one of the Colony's most exciting events, almost the only relic is to be found in three street names - Whalley, Goffe and Dixwell. These are the names of the three regicides who, at one time or another, found a hiding place in New Haven Colony.
Whalley and Goffe had been Major Generals in Cromwell's army, peers in Cromwell's House of Lords. Dixwell had been a Colonel. With sixty-six others they had signed Charles I's death warrant. After the Restoration these judges of the King had been excluded from the general act of amnesty. In spite of the fact that many of the regicides had been condemned to death and some already hung, drawn and
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quartered - the prescribed penalty for treason - New England had the courage to welcome Whalley and Goffe, not as criminals but as heroes. From Boston, through Hartford and Guilford, to New Haven they were sped on their way, always well ahead of the officers sent by the King to arrest them. The local authorities, for the most part, politely agreed to co-operate, but somehow the officers could never catch up. If half the traditions can be believed, Whalley and Goffe spent a night or two in half the cellars and barns of New England. Certainly they spent some time as guests of John Davenport. When the chase grew too hot they were secreted in a cave high up on West Rock - "Judges' Cave" it is still called. When cold weather set in they were taken to Milford, and eventually went to Hadley, Massachu- setts. Dixwell did not arrive at New Haven until later. Under the name of James Davids he lived in New Haven for many years, and married the widow of a friend. It is said that even Mrs. Davids did not know that she was really Mrs. John Dixwell.
The presence of the regicides in New Haven Colony must have been known to many people. The King's officers issued both threats and rewards, but apparently no one even thought of betraying the Colony's guests. On a Sunday following the arrival of Whalley and Goffe, John Davenport, whose piety did not bedim his wit, preached a sermon on the text: "Hide the outcasts; betray not him who wandereth."
New Haven Colony, as it was finally constituted, owed its exist- ence, at least in part, to the organization of the United Colonies of New England - America's first Congress. As early as 1638, while Eaton and Davenport were preparing to settle at Quinnipiac, Massa- chusetts had proposed a confederation. There was suspicion in Hartford that this proposal was a plot on the part of the Bay govern- ment to absorb both Connecticut and the Eaton-Davenport planta- tion. According to Governor Winthrop of Massachusetts, Roger Ludlow's reply was "very harsh." In 1643, however, articles were agreed upon for a confederation that would be a "firme and perpetuall league of ffrendship and amytie for offence and defence ... for their mutuall safety and wellfare." The members were Massachusetts, Connecticut, Plymouth and New Haven. Rhode Island was not invi- ted. Massachusetts would have no relations with Rhode Island's
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leaders, and both Massachusetts and Connecticut were claiming a large part of her territory.
The United Colonies was to be a federation of jurisdictions, not of individual towns or plantations. It so happened that New Haven had a measure of control over two subordinate towns: Southold, Long Island, and Stamford. This was viewed as constituting a jurisdiction, so New Haven had been asked to join.
While New Haven was eligible to membership, the neighboring towns were not. In 1639-40 Rev. Peter Pruden had led his group .to a location ten miles to the west and organized a town they named Milford. In May of 1639 the Rev. Henry Whitfield, a friend of Thomas Hooker, had sailed from England for New Haven with some of his parishioners. They had picked a site to the east, and had begun a plantation called Guilford. While their government was patterned on that of New Haven, Guilford, like Milford, was an independent town. Now, in 1643, with the United Colonies more or less control- ling affairs in New England, Milford and Guilford found themselves completely isolated. As independent plantations they were ineligible to membership in the confederation; as outsiders their position was precarious. For their own protection they were compelled to combine with some jurisdiction, and both elected to join New Haven. The next year New Haven sold some land to a group from Wethersfield with the proviso that they come into New Haven's jurisdiction. This additional plantation was named Branford.
Prior to 1643 the meetings of the New Haven General Court were little more than town meetings, except that at some sessions Stamford was represented. But now that several dependent towns were involved, it was found that a colonial government required something more in the way of a constitution. Some years later, when their laws were printed for distribution to the various towns, they explained and justified their position. Acknowledging that "the Supreme power of making Lawes, and of repealing them, belongs to God onely," and that the "Lawes for holinesse, and Righteousnesse, are already made, and given us in the Scriptures . .. . . and may not be altered by humane power or authority," they asserted that "Civil Rulers and Courts, and this Generall Court in particular .. . are the Ministers of God . . . and have the power to declare, publish and establish, for the planta-
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