USA > Connecticut > The history of Connecticut, from the first settlement of the colony to the adoption of the present constitution, vol. I > Part 2
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484
New Haven Case Stated.
484
HISTORY
OF
CONNECTICUT.
CHAPTER I.
SETTLEMENT OF THE CONNECTICUT RIVER VALLEY.
SOME time during the year 1631, an Indian Sachem visited the governors of the Massachusetts and Plymouth colonies in the guise of a suppliant. He said his name was Wah-qui- ma-cut. He described the country occupied by his own and kindred tribes as a rich, beautiful valley, abounding in corn and game, and divided by a river called "Connecticut," which he represented as surpassing all other streams, as well in its size and in the purity of its waters, as in the excellence and variety of the fish that swam in it, and the number of the otter and beaver that might be found along its banks. He begged that each of the colonies would send Englishmen to make settlements in this valley. He even offered to give the new emigrants eighty beaver skins annually, and supply them with corn, as an inducement to make the trial ; and proposed that two men should first be delegated to view the country, and make report to the governors, before any steps should be taken towards a removal there.
The governor of the Massachusetts received him courte- ously, but declined to entertain his proposition. Governor Winslow, of Plymouth, without directly acceding to it, was unable wholly to dismiss it from his mind ; and not long after went himself to spy out the riches of this Indian Paradise .* He found it in primitive loveliness. All that his eye rested on was wild and coy, as if no foot save that of the savage
Morton's Memorial, 395 ; Brodhead, i. 210, 233 ; Trumbull, i. 30.
2
18
HISTORY OF CONNECTICUT.
had trodden there since the dawn of creation. So Winslow doubtless thought, for he named himself the "discoverer" of the River and the Valley.
Governor Winslow must have made a very favorable report of the country, for we find during the following year other explorers, from Plymouth, searching the Connecticut river up and down ; and, as early as October, 1633, they had, under the sanction of the colony, established a trading house near the mouth of the Tunxis river in Windsor, and were already carrying on a successful traffic in furs with the Indians, in defiance of the Dutch, from Manhattan, who just before had erected a house called "Good Hope," at Hart- ford,* but six miles below, and who vowed vengeance against the English traders, who had encroached upon the rights of the "original discoverers of The Fresh River." William Holmes was the man who had been selected by the Governor of Plymouth to build the trading house at Windsor. With the frame of this house fitted, and all the materials requisite for completing it, Holmes, with his commission in his pocket, set sail for the mouth of the Connecticut. He passed up the river without meeting with any resistance, until he arrived at the Dutch fort at Hartford. This fortification was not very formidable, having only two small pieces of ordnance ; but, such as it was, its little garrison bristled with opposition at sight of the ill-omened sail, stood gallantly by their guns, and commanded Holmes " to strike his colors, or they would fire upon him."; But Holmes was not a man to be intimi-
* Brodhead, (in his "History of the State of New York," vol. i. p. 238,) states that this Dutch trading house was projected in 1623, but was not built until 1633, when the new director general, Van Twiller, " dispatched John Van Curler, one of his commissaries, with six others, to finish the long-projected fort on the Connecticut river, and to obtain a formal Indian deed for the tracts of land formerly selected." Through the negotiations of Van Curler, the Dutch claimed to have purchased a tract of land of the Pequots, as conquerors, "with the good- will and assent of Sequeen." A few years afterwards, however, (July 2, 1640,) Sequasson, son of Sequeen, testified before the court at Hartford, "that he never sold any ground to the Dutch, neither was at any time conquered by the Pequots, nor paid any tribute to them."
+ Bradford, in Hutchinson, vol. ii. p. 435; Brodhead, vol. ii. p. 241.
19
HOLMES' EXPEDITION.
[1634.]
dated by words. He had, he said, a commission from the governor to go up the river, and he should go. A fierce rep- lication from the Dutch followed; but, whether their guns had no powder and ball in them, or whether they thought it best to save their ammunition against a time of greater need, they suffered the English to sail by, and erect their trading house, and surround it with palisades, before they made any further attempt to restrain them. But Holmes soon found difficul- ties beginning to thicken around him. The sachems of the river tribes had been driven away from their territories by the Pequots, and Holmes, after bringing them back in his vessel, had purchased of them such land as he found requisite for carrying out his enterprise. Enraged that their old mas- ters were restored by the English to their former dominion, the petty chiefs along the river incited the Indians to acts of violence against the traders.
Meanwhile, the news of Holmes' expedition reached the ears of the Dutch governor, Wouter Van Twiller, at Fort Amsterdam. Astonished at the presumption of the intruders, his excellency immediately sent a detachment of troops to the infested district, with instructions to drive the English traders from the river. It is probable that this company was joined by allies from "Good Hope," for when it presented itself without the palisades at the mouth of the Tunxis, its ranks numbered full seventy armed men, under spread ban- ners, inflamed with a noble ardor, that boded no good to Holmes and his men. But all this martial array, so near his gates, though attended with the promise of utter annihilation unless he acceded to their terms, like the threats at "Good Hope," produced an effect the very reverse of what had been intended. The fur trader and his men stood on the defen- sive. It was obvious there must be bloodshed before the colors of the States General could be displayed inside of the palisades-an awkward situation for an invading army, from which it was prudently extricated by a parley, and a well- timed retreat .*
De Vries' Voyages, p. 150; Winthrop, vol. i. pp. 123, 148, 153, 386 ; Brodhead, Vol. i. p. 242.
20
HISTORY OF CONNECTICUT.
Thus ended the exploits of Wouter Van Twiller and the garrison at "Good Hope," against the Plymouth traders, leav- ing the latter in the bloodless and peaceful possession of the soil, to contend, as best they might, with the rigors of impending winter, and to abide their time for the coming on of the calam- ities that awaited them, of which I am to speak in their order.
Sometime before Winslow discovered the Connecticut river and the lands adjacent, the country-possibly from the repre- sentations of Indian runners, who had enlarged upon its beauties at Boston and Plymouth, or perhaps from that love of the marvelous that causes men to desire most earnestly whatever is unexplored and untried-had been sought after with no ordinary solicitude by men of no vulgar rank. In the course of the year 1630, the famous Plymouth Company, the mother corporation that gave life to all the New England grants, conveyed the whole territory of what was subse- quently called the colony of Connecticut, and much more, to Robert Earl of Warwick; and the better opinion is, that this grant was, during the same year, confirmed to him by a patent from Charles I. But as no trace can be found of any such patent, it has been doubted if it ever had an existence .* On the 19th of March of the next year, Robert of Warwick executed under his hand and seal the grant since known as the old patent of Connecticut, wherein he conveyed the same territory to Viscount Say and Seal, Robert Lord Brooke, John Hampden, Pym, Sir Richard Saltonstall, and others, whose names still shed a mild light over the clouds of revo- lution that darkened the sunset of the most graceful, yet err- ing, of all the monarchs that have ever sat upon the throne of England. Men they were, who may well be said to have been as free from the incendiary spirit that sought to unsettle the old order of the British constitution, as their souls were abhorrent of the oppressive acts of the Court of High Com- mission. One of them, the muse of Gray has named as the
* As the validity of the patent granted by the Earl of Warwick to Lord Say and Seal and his associates, seems never to have been called in question, it is rea- sonable to infer that he was vested with full power to grant such a patent.
21
APPLICATION DENIED.
[1634.]
poet's ideal of the patriot; and another, even Milton, who condescended to flatter no one, could not forbear to write, " with honor may I name him, the Lord Brooke." Such were the original grantees of the soil now known-may it , ever be !- as Connecticut. Such were the illustrious men, who looked to the seclusion of her shades for a retreat for themselves and their friends from the grasp of a too stringent political and ecclesiastical domination. But, before the new proprietors could find time to take possession of their pur- chase, it was pre-occupied, as we have seen, by the Dutch and the fur traders from New Plymouth.
By this time, such numbers had come over from Eng- land, and planted themselves in the vicinity of Boston, that the people at Watertown, Dorchester, and Newtown, (Cambridge,) began to find themselves crowded into such close neighborhoods, that they had neither land enough fit for culture, nor pastures for their cattle .* Especially they were in want of meadow lands. They began to cast about them for a more ample domain ; and, from the rumors that reached them from time to time of the rich intervals that lay on either bank of the Connecticut, described in such glowing terms by all who brought tidings of their lux- uriance, what meadows so likely to make glad their flocks and herds, and what fields promised to yield a more grateful recompense to the toil of the planter? They dwelt upon these pictures until they could no longer banish them from their minds. They hesitated, they debated with one another, whether they should a second time face the exposures that must meet them in a wilderness. But the motives for a removal were too strong to be resisted, and, besides, as their history has since proved, they were strangers to fear. They resolved to go. But would they be allowed to go ? At first, the General Court of Massachusetts consented to it; yet, when it was made known that these adventurers proposed to plant a new colony upon the Connecticut river, their enter- prise was stoutly opposed. In September, when the court
* Trumbull, vol. i. p. 58.
22
HISTORY OF CONNECTICUT.
again met, the matter gave rise to a hot debate. The Houses were divided .* There appeared in the field two champions of no ordinary character. In 1630, the Rev. Thomas Hooker, for some time a minister of the Established Church at Chelmsford, in the county of Essex, " was silenced for non-conformity." Forty-seven conforming clergymen presented a petition in his behalf to the Bishop of London, wherein they vouched for the soundness of his doctrines and the purity of his life. But their efforts proved unavailing, and to save himself from the severities likely to follow his recusancy, he fled to Holland. As, in later days, Boling- broke and Chesterfield attended upon the preaching of Whitefield, and Montague and Mackintosh upon that of Robert Hall, so did the Earl of Warwick, and other men of note, often go many miles to yield themselves up to the fas- cinations of Hooker's eloquence. It is not to be wondered at, that the whole body of his parishioners, from whom he had been so suddenly torn, felt the keenest anguish at the separation, and that a large proportion of them, with the ex- pectation that their pastor would follow them, embarked soon after for America. Many personal friends and ad- mirers of his genius, who had never been connected with him by so delicate a tie, were of the same party. A few came over at first, and commenced a plantation at Wey- mouth. Afterwards, a larger number arrived in the year 1632, and, with the former, all established themselves at Newtown. At their earnest solicitation, to come over and place himself at their head, Hooker finally sailed for America, with Samuel Stone, his assistant, and arrived in Massachu- setts on the 4th of September, 1633. He had been in Mas- sachusetts, therefore, only a year, when this interesting ques- tion, of the propriety of allowing the petitioners to found a new colony, came up for a second discussion. Hooker, who had already made up his mind to be of the emigrating party should the petition be granted, advocated the cause of the people. Most of the other ministers, at the head of whom
* Winthrop, (Savage's Ed.,) i. p. 168.
23
DEBATE BETWEEN HOOKER AND COTTON.
[1634.]
was the famous John Cotton, strongly opposed the project. Hooker argued their want of room in which to expand themselves. It was a vital error, he said, that so many towns should be crowded into so small a space. They had neither land to till nor for pasturage. The people were poor. They were unable, so long as they remained as they were, to support their own ministers, much less to give any thing in aid of others, who should afterwards come over from England in a destitute condition. He set eloquently before them the advantages of the country whither it was proposed to remove; the importance of the river, in a mili- tary and political point of view ; the close neighborhood of the Dutch at Manhattan; the fact, that they had already a trading house in the richest part of the country ; and the urgent need there was that immediate possession should be secured .* We may well believe, too, that he did not omit to set forth in bright colors, the facilities presented by a large. and navigable stream for commerce; the rich furs supplied by that stream and its many tributaries, in its flow of hun- dreds of miles through a wild region, accessible, indeed, through the medium of savages, but long to remain unex- plored by civilized men.
On the other hand, Cotton, the most learned and per- suasive of the clergy, urged the weakness of Massachu- setts ; that its principal poverty was a poverty of men, to subdue and cultivate a wilderness large enough to support many times their number, and to make a successful stand against the tribes of savages that lurked in its solitudes ; that those who had sought to leave the colony in this defenseless state, had taken a solemn oath to promote the interests of the Massachusetts, and that they would violate their consciences, were they to desert the commonwealth in its infancy, and while it might well be said to be struggling for existence. Finally, let the case be as it might with those who remained, those who should go would be exposed to the horrors of war, both with the Dutch and Indians; that it
* Savage's Winthrop, vol. i. p. 167; Trumbull, vol. i. p. 58.
24
HISTORY OF CONNECTICUT.
would be in a measure a suicidal act, and that it was the part of benevolence, rather than of tyranny, that the General Court should interpose and prevent a calamity so terrible.
The whole colony was thrown into a state of intense ex- citement by this discussion. Hooker's powerful eloquence, poured, as it was, into the popular current, carried along with it, as might have been expected, a majority of the rep- resentatives. The vote of the assistants was against the application, and so, as a matter of course, it was lost .* In looking back upon this debate, in which those who took a part and felt an interest have all been dead for nearly two centuries, and in looking over those vast regions, washed by the great lakes, the Pacific, and the gulf of Mexico, divided by magnificent rivers-regions teeming now with the pos- terity, as well of those who advocated, as of those who op- posed an emigration to the valley of the Connecticut-the large views and noble liberality of Hooker, exhibited on that occasion, assume the dignity of a sublime prophecy, as if he must have seen in his mind's eye the millions that were one day to inhabit them.
The fate of the application in the General Court gave a temporary check to the plans of Hooker and his friends ; but it was far from being satisfactory to the petitioners, and some there were who secretly set it at defiance, and resolved to remove at all hazards. A number of the inhabitants of Watertown, during the fall of the same year, set out for the interdicted country ; and, arriving in season to construct tem- porary houses in which to pass the winter,t made, it is be- lieved, at Pyquaug, (Wethersfield,) the first settlement on the Connecticut river.
In May of the following year, the old application of Hooker and his friends was renewed, and leave to remove reluctantly granted by the General Court, with the proviso, that those who emigrated should still "continue under the jurisdiction of Massachusetts."}
* Savage's Winthrop, i. p. 168. + Trumbull, vol. i. p. 59.
# Savage's Winthrop, vol. i. p. 191.
25
HARTFORD SETTLED.
[1635.]
During the summer of the same year, several of the people belonging to the congregation of the Rev. Mr. Wareham, of Dorchester, removed to a point on the river near the Ply- mouth trading house, and, much to the alarm of Holmes and those whom he represented, prepared to lay the foundations of the town of Windsor .* The whole of that season, the Water- town settlers, in little parties of a few families, continued to make additions to the gallant little company of pioneers at Wethersfield. The planters at Newtown were getting ready, also, to remove to Hartford the next spring. Thus passed the eventful summer of 1635, in bustling preparation, until, in the middle of October, when the trees were half stripped of their leaves, and the chestnuts and acorns were dropping from the boughs in the lovely autumn weather, sixty persons, among whom were women and little children, set out on their tedious march to the new settlements. They took along with them such movable property as they could, in- cluding their horses, cattle, and swine. A slow, wearisome journey they made of it. They were delayed by so many obstacles, that frosts and snows were pressing hard upon them before they reached the eastern bank of the Connecticut. And so much time was spent in making rafts, and crossing the river with their cattle, that they were not ready for win- ter when it came. Most of them settled in Hartford.
In the fall of the same year, came over to America John Winthrop, the younger, a commissioned agent of Viscount Say and Seal, and the other noblemen, knights, and gentle- men, named in the original patent of the colony, t with in- structions to repair immediately to the mouth of the Connec- ticut river with fifty men, and commence the building of a strong fortification, and houses as well for the garrison as for gentlemen, expected to arrive in the course of the next year. The fort was to be built upon a very large scale, to embrace within its inclosure "houses suitable for the reception of men of quality," to be erected as soon as practicable. Win-
* Savage's Winthrop, i. p. 198; Trumbull, vol. i. p. 60.
t Ib. vol. i. pp. 202, 203.
26
HISTORY OF CONNECTICUT.
throp was directed to take possession of a suitable tract of land, near the fort, containing from a thousand to fifteen hundred acres, that was to be reserved for the use of the for- tification. He was constituted by this commission, "Gov- ernor of the river Connecticut," for the space of a year after his arrival there.
When Governor Winthrop arrived in Massachusetts, he heard rumors that the Dutch were preparing to anticipate him in the erection of a fort at the place named in his com- mission. He waited only to collect about twenty men, and sent them by sea to take possession of the mouth of the river, and to erect embankments, and to plant their cannon there with all dispatch. They had much need of haste; for, scarcely had they begun to make themselves ready for de- fence, when a Dutch sail from Manhattan was seen making for the mouth of the river. The current of the Connecticut, at this place, pressed close upon the western bank ; and here, upon a bluff that juts out boldly into the deep water, almost upon the very line where the river loses itself in the sea, Winthrop's men had hastily thrown up their embankments and mounted their guns. When the Dutch had approached near enough to the land to see the new fortress, with the English colors floating above it, they withdrew without any show of resistance, leaving the governor's forces in quiet possession of the key to the treasures of a country that had for some time tempted their cupidity, but was henceforth to be forever locked against them.
I have already alluded to the severity of that memorable winter. The garrison at Saybrook suffered severely ; but it was reserved to the three settlements further up the valley to encounter all the horrors of a winter in the wilderness.
By the middle of November, the river was frozen com- pletely over. The personal effects of the settlers, such as they could not well carry with them in their journey through the woods, had been forwarded by sea; but the vessels that bore this precious lading, of beds, clothing, and provisions, for delicate women and little children, were either wrecked
27
FAMINE ON THE CONNECTICUT.
[1635.]
upon that coast, even in this age of improved navigation, so fatal to mariners, or forced to put back again into Boston harbor. By the first of December, the pangs of famine began to be added to the numbing influences of cold. With a fru- gal hand, the father of the household measured out the stinted dole of bread and meat to his offspring, until both bread and meat were gone. Corn was bought, in small quantities, of the Indians ; but these simple-minded creatures, with their usual improvidence, had but too little to spare. Finally, in small parties, the inhabitants of the three settlements, regardless of all other enemies, fled, pallid with fear, from the agonies of starvation. Some crossed the river upon the ice, and, committing themselves to the pathless snows, waded back to the Massachusetts .* Seventy persons were induced to go down to the fort at Saybrook, with the hope of meeting the vessels that should have brought their provisions from Boston. But they looked in vain for the frail ships, that had proved unable to withstand the rocks and shoals whither the blasts that sweep the New England coast at that tempestuous sea- son of the year had driven them. They went aboard a small vessel of sixty tons burden, which they found twenty miles above the fort, hoping to be able to sail in her to Mas- sachusetts. But they saw that she was fast anchored in the ice, and it was two days before they could get her under way. With much difficulty, they reached Boston, after a dangerous voyage of many days. But of the few that re- mained, the condition was still worse. When they had spent their small stock of food, and could get no more from the Indians, the more hardy of them betook themselves to the woods, to hunt the bear and the deer ; and, when this resource failed them, they dug up acorns from beneath the snow, and ground-nuts from the banks of the streams. Many of their cattle died, and those that survived, like their owners, were sickly and drooping. Add to all this bodily suffering, the consciousness of utter helplessness. They were alone. The Indians, though kind to them, were kind only from motives
* Savage's Winthrop, i. 207.
28
HISTORY OF CONNECTICUT.
of interest or fear. How long would they remain so, was a question asked doubtingly, and answered by an apprehensive glance of the eye. The vast forest, a familiar home to the sav- age, was to them frowning and bewildering. Besides, there was something terrific in the consciousness, that the very forces of nature, but a few weeks before so genial and smiling, were banded together to crush them. Still, they hoped and struggled on. In their darkest hours, they never forgot the promise, that seed-time and harvest shall not fail.
At last, the winds began to lull, the snow crumbled and slowly melted away, and a few scattered birds began to give token that April and the bursting buds were close at hand.
The Connecticut settlements were nominally under the rule of the mother country ; but they really, from the first, governed themselves. For three or four years, their courts consisted of magistrates, to a number not exceeding six, and from nine to twelve committee men, each town sending an equal number. On the 14th of January, 1638-9, it was or- dered that, in future, there should be two general courts in each year, viz .: on the first Thursdays of April and September- the first to be called a court of election, on which occasion seven magistrates should be chosen, the governor to be elected from among them. It was further ordered, that the towns of Hartford, Wethersfield, and Windsor, should be entitled to four deputies each; and that the number to be elected in such towns as might subsequently be admitted to the jurisdiction, should be determined upon according to their population .* The special or particular courts, holden in the interim, were variously constituted-sometimes a jury being substituted for the deputies-three or more of the magistrates being always present-the governor, deputy governor, or a moderator, pre- siding.t The general courts were invested with all the legisla- tive and judicial functions of the colony, including the power of
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