USA > Connecticut > Tercentenary pamphlet series, v. 1 Connecticut and the British Government > Part 11
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commonwealth" to be administered by a governor, six magistrates, and other necessary officers, chosen by the admitted freemen of the colony by written ballot, a "free- man" being anyone admitted an inhabitant by the major part of the town where he lived, who had taken the oath of fidelity to the colony. The three settlements (Spring- field having dropped out) were to choose four deputies each to represent them in the general assembly, the latter to be held twice a year-a court of election in April, and a regular court in September. The governor was to be elected yearly from among the magistrates, had to be a church member, and could not be reëlected until an- other had been chosen and had served. The General Court was allowed wide powers; it could make and repeal laws, levy rates, admit freemen, appoint officials, control grants-at-large of land, and provide for defense. The governor might cast a vote in case of a tie, but he had no right of veto. Adjournment, prorogation, and dissolution were in the hands of the court itself. Provision was made for holding the court, should the designated officials at any time neglect or refuse to call it.
During the early years of settlement, 1635-1639, the control of the land had been in the hands of each group of plantation settlers and their first act upon arrival was to purchase from the natives a right to the soil, the purchase money being raised by subscriptions to a common fund. Each subscriber received an allotment in proportion to the amount put in. The Windsor people obtained most of their land from the Plymouth traders, paying £37 for it, and later this possession was confirmed to them by the Indians. All land was bought fairly although there can be no doubt that the Indians often, if not always, misunder- stood what the bargain meant, believing that they were conceding only the use and not the ownership of the terri-
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tory defined in the deeds. They had no real conception of the meaning of ownership, accustomed as they were to tribal and clan control instead of individual and private tenure, and probably often interpreted the so-called sale as meaning nothing more than the admittance of the Eng- lish to a share in the advantages of the region. In some of the deeds, as in the case of Enfield, the Indians reserved the rights of hunting and fishing, and in the case of Waterbury they gave the settlers the right to use the territory but not to make permanent settlements.
With the establishment of the colony government in 1639 all lands not purchased or granted were at the dis- posal of the General Court and "colony land" continued to exist, particularly in the northeastern and northwest- ern parts of the colony for another century. No one could buy land or settle there without leave and after 1663 no one was allowed to buy any parcel of land from the Indi- ans, "except he doe buy or receive the same for the use of the colony or the benefit of some towne, with the allow- ance of the court." But land once legally conveyed to an individual or town was held in full ownership and could not be disposed of except by the grantee. Within the town, the general meeting of the inhabitants in town meeting distributed the land, according to whatever method was approved by majority vote-either equal division, rateable estate, or individual gift, though in the eighteenth century control fell into the hands of the "proprietors," as they were called, that is, the original purchasers and their heirs, and many a dispute arose between old comers and newcomers, inhabitants and de- scendants, over this difficult problem. It was the custom of the towns earliest founded to take back the allotments of those who did not fulfil the terms of the grant-such as living in the town for three years and carrying on their
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plantation duties. Division was frequently by lot, which among the first settlers was construed as leaving the judgment to God and doubtless at times relieved the town fathers of not a little embarrassment. The common and undivided lands in the townships continued to exist, as did the public lands of the colony, for many years, those of Hartford not being finally apportioned until 1754. As a rule grants were made to householders, but both Farmington and Wallingford had "bachelor lots" that were granted to single men in the hope that they might eventually marry and rear families and so make a proper use of the lands assigned. Disputes over bounda- ries between towns as well as individuals were of common occurrence and the great majority of cases that came be- fore the county courts was of this nature.
The location of the river towns was not due to any hap- hazard choice on the part of those who migrated to Con- necticut, for the river was excellently adapted for trade, having few rapids and abounding in fish, with tribu- taries of considerable size that made inland connections by canoes and small boats worth while. Its main channel was deep enough to admit the passage of boats of sea- going dimensions. As time went on husbandry and agri- culture took precedence over trade, and the rich glacial deposits of sediment left in the Connecticut Valley lay in wide, flat, fertile meadows on either side of the river from Windsor to Middletown. This rich bottom land, fre- quently recuperated by the freshets-the spring overflow from the river-was what made permanent settlement practicable. The Dutch had the first choice of land and they selected the point at the mouth of the Little River (Hartford) as a place easy to fortify, within reasonable distance of the Sound and near the inland waterways. Here they found fields already cleared by the Indians,
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and between these fields and the (Talcott) mountains behind was a heavily wooded region supplying plenty of timber for building purposes. That the English chose lo- cations above and below the Dutch fort and that the three river towns remained the wealthiest in Connecticut for a long time after their settlement attest the good busi- ness sense of these shrewd people from Manhattan.
The advantages of the river and coast trade with Bos- ton and the necessity of controlling the mouth of the Connecticut River were immediately evident to the lords and gentlemen, who under the Warwick patent were planning to find a refuge in New England. They were particularly anxious to get ahead of the Dutch, who were showing signs of an intention to occupy "Kiefts Hoeck" (Saybrook) as they had already occupied Dutch Point at Hartford and of building a fort there. On July 7, 1635, the patentees, Saye and Sele, Brooke, Fenwick, and others commissioned John Winthrop, jr., son of the governor of Massachusetts, to serve as agent and governor of the "River Connecticut, the harbors and places adjoining for the space of one year after his arrival there." He was in- structed to build a fort at the river's mouth and houses for men of quality, and to reserve 1,500 acres for the use of those who might inhabit there. He was supplied with provisions and £2000 in money. Before leaving England Winthrop engaged Lion Gardiner, a skilled engineer, to help him, and advised him to choose a place "both for the convenience of a good harbor and for capableness and fitness for fortification."
Upon his arrival at Boston with his fellow agents, the Reverend Hugh Peter and Harry Vane, he entered at once upon his new duties. He sent a bark of thirty tons to Say- brook with twenty men on board under the command of Lieutenant Gibbons and Sergeant Willard. They arrived
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November 24, 1635, and Winthrop and Gardiner fol- lowed in a few days. They began to fortify the point at once, and were none too soon, for in December the Dutch arrived, evidently expecting to take possession of the place. But they were frightened away by the two cannon which the English had planted on the shore.
As 300 people were expected from England in the spring, Winthrop worked hard to complete the fortifica- tion, which consisted of a large earthwork, supported and supplemented by beams. At one end stood the block house, probably a sort of prolongation of the fort itself. Nearby were a few houses for prospective settlers and across the neck of the point on which the fort was built was a palisade, which effectually cut it off from the main- land and protected it on the northern side. Beyond the palisade were laid out the 1,500 acres which were to be set apart for cultivation.
During the winter of 1635-1636 the fort served as a place of temporary asylum for the half-starved Windsor people on their return trip to Boston and for this act of mercy the inhabitants at Saybrook were remembered in Massachusetts by a day of fasting and prayer. Though George Fenwick, the only one of the patentees ever to set foot on Saybrook soil, came over for a short time and though a few people migrated from Massachusetts, the expected addition of settlers in the spring from England did not materialize. Harry Vane was in Boston during the summer and begged Winthrop to ask for anything that he might need and the elder Winthrop wrote his son that "the gentlemen seem to be discouraged in their design here." The outlook was not hopeful. The prospect of Saybrook's becoming a trading center was not encourag- ing, for there were not many Indians about, the land was not especially fertile, the harbor was blocked by a sand-
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bar, and the up-river towns were plainly monopolizing the more distant Indian traffic. The fort bore the brunt of the Pequot War and rendered invaluable service as a protec- tion for the river mouth, but otherwise the disadvan- tages of the location far outweighed the advantages.
In 1639 Fenwick, who in the meantime had gone back to England and there married Alice, daughter of Sir Ed- ward Apsley and widow of Sir John Boteler, returned to the settlement, bringing with him his wife, his chaplain Thomas Higginson (son of the Reverend Francis Higgin- son formerly at Salem) and a number of others. Such a company attracted newcomers and the settlement began to lose something of its military character. In 1641 Fen- wick wrote Winthrop that he had succeeded in growing apple, peach, and cherry trees there, a beginning, cer- tainly, of an agricultural interest. There seems to have been no church organization, despite the presence of a chaplain and a population of about fifty, until 1646. In 1641 Lady Fenwick became a member of Hooker's church in Hartford and her baby was baptized there.
Except for help in aiding the prosecution of the Pequot War and sundry attempts to settle boundary questions, Winthrop and Fenwick had little to do with the other river plantations. The latter had been made a freeman of the Connecticut Colony just before his return to England in 1636 and in 1646 the General Court there agreed that if he would come under that colony's jurisdiction his "privileges would not be infringed." That there was some understanding between Connecticut and Saybrook is evident from the fact that the former paid Fenwick for necessary repairs on the fort in 1643, but no written agreement was concluded until the next year. Probably Fenwick waited to hear from the other patentees as to his next move and undoubtedly wished to be absolutely sure
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that there was no hope of a new migration from England before he accepted Connecticut's offer. The activities of the Long Parliament were keeping the lords and gentle- men in England and the hope of reorganization at home was gradually dissipating the need of leaving England in order to find a home elsewhere.
The agreement of Fenwick with Connecticut was fi- nally concluded on December 5, 1644. It took the form of a contract of sale covering the fort and its appurtenances, all land on the Connecticut River, and a promise to con- vey to Connecticut all the land between Saybrook and the "Narragansett River," "if it were in his power," which as events were to prove never was the case. In return the Connecticut colonists were to pay Fenwick for two years certain duties on all exports of corn, biscuit, and beaver passing the fort, as well as a tax on every cow and mare three years old and on every hog or sow killed in the river towns. Springfield was included in this arrangement, as she owed some return for the protection which the fort had offered her.
In 1658 Fenwick died and Connecticut claimed from his executor, Culick, certain moneys that had been paid to the fort under the agreement of 1644, but for which Connecticut had not received the stipulated return, namely, the land between Saybrook and Narragansett, which Fenwick in default of a clear title under the Warwick patent had not been able to transfer legally. Captain Culick finally compromised by paying Connecti- cut £500, thus freeing her from further payments to the fort; while Connecticut, in her turn, granted administra- tion on the Fenwick estate and discharged Culick from further liabilities. The settlement had suffered a grievous loss in 1647, when, on a very tempestuous night in the depth of winter, the fort was set on fire and all the
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buildings within the palisade, with all the goods, were destroyed. Captain Mason, who was living there with his wife and children, was saved with difficulty, but others lost their lives, as Winthrop, jr., in mentioning the incident, calls it a "fatal fire" and says that the only copy of the Warwick patent in the colony was lost at the same time. The damage was valued at a thousand pounds.
Saybrook presents a unique form of settlement in Con- necticut, as the only town which started as a strictly military post and the only one to be under an outside proprietary governor. Soon after these conditions were removed, by Connecticut's purchase in 1644 and the burning of the fort in 1647, the town proper began to grow in numbers and agricultural activities. Lands were laid out and bounds run in 1649, on both sides of the river. People drifted in from time to time from Massa- chusetts and the river towns, and gradually the place took on the form of a regular town similar to the other towns in Connecticut, finding representation in the Gen- eral Court in 1651, entering the list of estates of towns "within this jurisdiction" in 1654, and sharing all the duties and obligations, including jury and military serv- ice, from this time forward as would any other town.
The harbor and mouth of the Thames or Pequot River had been known to the English for a long time. The lo- cality was familiar to the coasting vessels going to and from Boston and it had served as a rendezvous for the colonial soldiers during the Pequot War. In 1637 Israel Stoughton of Massachusetts wrote to the governor and council of that colony describing the character of the country, which he had seen as he had passed through in pursuit of the Pequots and expressing the conviction that "Pequid" was hardly worth the loss of many soldiers. "As for plantations," he said, "here is no meadow I see or
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hear of near; the upland good but rocky and unfit for ploughs for the most part. Indeed were there no better, 'twere worthy the best of us-the upland being, as I judge, stronger land than the Bay upland. If you would enlarge the state and provide for the poor servants of Christ that are yet unprovided, I must speak my con- science. I confess the place and places whither God's providence carried us, to Quillipeage [Quinnipiac] river and beyond to the Dutch, is before this or the Bay either .. . abundantly. But if there is special purpose in selecting Pequot then considering, I. the goodness of the land, 2. the fairness of title, 3. the neighborhood of Connecticut, 4. the good access thereto (wherein it is before Connecti- cut), 5. that an ill neighbor may possess it if a good do not . . . then I would readily give it my good word." But de- spite the desire of Massachusetts to extend her territory to the southward, as seen in her endeavor to wrest the Narragansett country from Rhode Island and so to ob- tain a commercial outlet in that region, she never made any serious attempt to dispute possession of the lands west of the Thames River.
John Winthrop's commission as governor of the Say- brook country expired in 1636 and after a brief visit to England he returned to interest himself in the region around the Pequot River extending to Narragansett Bay. He received in 1640 a grant of Fishers Island from Mas- sachusetts, which was confirmed by Connecticut the next year, "as far as hinder not the public good of the coun- try, for the purpose of fortifying or of setting up a trade in fishing or salt or such like." The island had long been famous for its fine hunting and fishing grounds and had been a favorite resort of the Indians, but Winthrop did not make an effort to improve it, as he was for the next year or two occupied with a trip to England, which lasted
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for a year and a half, and with starting iron works in 1644 at Braintree and Lynn, an ill-starred speculation that bankrupted his successor, Richard Leader, because the enterprise was under-capitalized and made no money. He then turned his attention to Connecticut. There the General Court, anxious to have a plantation at Pequot as a "curb to the Indians," and hearing that he had dis- covered "some quantity of the best sort of iron stone be- ing convenient to be wrought in these parts," granted him permission to locate there. He had already erected a house on Fishers Island, but now he built one on the mainland also. In 1645 he came to the west side of the Thames and with the aid of men from Massachusetts, among whom was his friend Thomas Peters, laid out the land and began a settlement. Probably as many as twelve or fifteen men and their families formed the first contin- gent and, new settlers arriving the next spring, the plan- tation was organized May 6, 1646. Pequot grew slowly. In 1650 fourteen new families, from Gloucester, with their minister, Richard Blue, came as a church organiza- tion and uniting with themselves those already there, formed the first church in the community.
At the beginning of the settlement the Massachusetts General Court expressed the opinion that it was not sure under whose jurisdiction the Pequot people came, but that "it did not much matter as they belonged to the same confederation"-the Confederation of New Eng- land. Connecticut, however, thought that it did matter and claimed the territory by right of conquest, by pur- chase, and by patent. The court had already made large grants there-500 acres to Captain John Mason, 500 acres to his soldiers, and 10,000 acres to the magistrates for their disposal. In 1646 the rival claims were brought before the Commissioners of the Confederation for ex-
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amination. The decision favored Connecticut and she immediately took over the plantation and ordered Win- throp to execute justice there according to Connecticut law and in 1648 commissioned him as a regular magis- trate. The question of jurisdiction was brought up again in 1658, 1659, 1660, but Connecticut maintained her title successfully. The name, New London, was given by the court in 1658, "in memory of the City of London." The planting of this town represents the personal interest and devotion of one man, John Winthrop, jr., the first to see the possibilities of the place, the first to ask permission to locate there, and the one who stands out conspicuously as the leader of the settlement, acting as the spokesman and director of the people. He never exploited the land for his own profit or attempted to control more acres than were his fair share in the divisions of land made by the town.
As Captain Stoughton had reported, the country around Pequot could not compare in quality with that around the Quinnipiac River and beyond. His letter reached Boston two months after the arrival of the Rev- erend John Davenport, Theophilus Eaton, Edward Hop- kins, and the rest of the company from London, Kent, and Hereford. As with so many others Davenport and his friends were trying to escape from the long arm of Arch- bishop Laud, to find a place where they could cast aside the strict observances of the established church and wor- ship with the simple forms in which they believed. Mas- sachusetts wanted very much that they should stay within her jurisdiction, for such a company, possessed of wealth and distinction, would be a noteworthy addition to her own people. Though Governor Winthrop offered Davenport his choice of the best land and Charlestown and Newbury made generous terms, Davenport and Eaton could not find it in their hearts to remain. A few
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months in Massachusetts, where fears of English inter- ference were rife, where the Antinomian quarrel was at its height, and where the churches were already stocked with strong-minded men, convinced Davenport and Eaton that they had better look elsewhere. They had a great desire to "have their government both in civil and reli- gious matters agreeable to their own apprehensions." They disliked the religious upheaval and excitement go- ing on in Boston and saw, as Hooker did before them, that the chief offices of government were filled and that there was no place there for them.
Having heard the favorable reports of Quinnipiac, Eaton and a small party of men went down the coast to investigate the new land. They were much pleased with all they saw and, leaving seven men to spend the winter, returned to Boston. Early in the spring an Indian runner from Boston informed the seven men that they were to buy land from the Indians and to put up such shelter as they could for the rest of the company that was preparing to follow in a few weeks. This happened early in April, 1638, and on the eighteenth of that month the company arrived, being much taken with the fruitfulness of the country and its security "from the danger of a general governor" that threatened them at Boston.
It is evident that the dominant idea in Eaton's mind was the availability of New Haven for trade. Friendly Indians, a fine harbor, fairly navigable rivers, well wooded land for "spruce masts," and fertile meadows seemed to him all that could be desired. The fact that so many of the settlers were London merchants and, if tradition is to be believed, built elaborate houses in the town, would seem to indicate that they expected to be reimbursed in a short time from the profits of an active trade. It took many years before the failure of new arrivals, the col-
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lapse of many of their enterprises, and the loss of the "great shippe" taught them that they could not rely on trade alone. The eagerness of many to put through the settlement on the Delaware River-avowedly for trade, and the heated debates over the question of removing to Jamaica showed that the New Haven leaders were merchants by preference rather than agriculturists and struggled as long as they could to make their settlement a commercial center. They did not have the slightest claim to the territory they occupied other than by an Indian title, though probably the Connecticut people knew of their coming and were not opposed to it. They tried to obtain a charter, sending Gregson over in the "great shippe" for that special purpose, but the loss of the ship brought that hopeful project to an end, so that to the close of their period of independent life they were legally without protection. They made a second purchase of land from the Indians in December, 1638, covering a tract ten by thirteen miles, including all that is now Branford, East Haven, North Haven, Wallingford, Cheshire, Hamden, and Woodbridge.
The presence of Davenport at New Haven and of Fen- wick at Saybrook encouraged an English clergyman, Henry Whitfield, to seek a refuge from his troubles in the mother country in a tract of land lying midway between the two settlements. He sold his estate in 1639 and sailed for New England with his friend Fenwick, who was on his second voyage to his abode at the river's mouth. While on board Whitfield and his company adopted a plantation covenant, binding them to settle as one community and not to leave without the consent of the greater part of the members. They landed at Quinnipiac, where Davenport was expecting them, and after viewing the country, purchased from the Indians in September, 1639, a region,
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Menunkatuck, which they named Guilford. They chose the location, because Fenwick had given them a gift of land immediately west of Saybrook, which they found "low, flat and moist, agreeable to their wishes," with the climate like their own in England. The first winter they spent in such temporary shelters as they could provide, with the aid of friends from the New Haven Colony, and there they remained an independent community, sepa- rate from the New Haven government until, in 1643, in common with Milford on the west they entered the New Haven jurisdiction, forming the New Haven colony as distinct from the New Haven town. They established a church in the same year and in all their transactions pur- sued a course very much of their own, depending on the common law of England rather than on the Bible. When in 1664 Connecticut by virtue of her charter declared for the annexation of New Haven, Guilford men were among the first to leave the jurisdiction, Dr. Brian Rossiter lead- ing the way. The rest of the Guilford people remained loyal to the New Haven government to the end, though never as bitter against the union as were those of New Haven itself.
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