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The settlement of
the Connecticut Valley in the 1630's was the beginning of the
westward movement of the English colonists in the New World. When
news of the fertility of the Connecticut Valley reached
Massachusetts, many land-hungry groups who had grown restive under
the restrictive Massachusetts laws began to migrate westward.
A Dutch navigator, Adriaen Block, was probably the first to observe
the possibilities of the region, when he sailed along the coast and
up the Connecticut River, which he discovered in the year 1614 and
called the Varsche River. Nearly twenty years passed, however,
before the Dutch established a trading poast and fort near the
future site of Hartford (June, 1633). By this time the Indians had
reported the existence of a fertile country with valuable trading
possibilities to the Plymout colonists, and Edward Winslow made an
exploratory visit to the Connecticut Valley in the summer of 1632.
Next year a Plymouth expedition sailed up the Connecticut, past
Dutch Point, to the mouth of the Farmington River. There, on
September 26, 1633, they established a post at Mataneaug (Windsor).
In the same year , John Oldham of Watertown and three others
explored the Connecticut Valley, and "discovered many very desirable
places upon the same river, fit to receive many hundred
inhabitants." This report accomplished what the persuasions of
Winslow and Bradford had not effected, and stimulated the first
permanent settlement from the Bay towns of Watertown, Dorchester,
and New Town (Cambridge).
In 1634, a large party from Watertown, with Oldham among them,
settled at Pyquag (Wethersfield). They claimed that they were the
first settlers to plant a crop in the valley. In the summer of 1635,
emigrants from Dorchester settled in Windsor, erected a building,
and thereby gave present historians of Windsor an opportunity to
argue that this town was the first. But the severity of the winter
was such that most of the 'inhabitants' were driven down the
Connecticut River to the new military post at Saybrook, where they
took ship to their homes in Dorchester.
In October, 1635, the first general migration took place, when fifty
persons from New Town (Cambridge) under the leadership of John Steel
moved across Massachusetts with all their household goods and
settled at Suckiaug (Hartford) close by the Dutch trading post. The
Reverend Thomas Hooker and his congregation trekked westward in the
following spring. The prime motive of these migrations was land
hunger, as the constant arrival of newcomers from England taxed the
resources of the early towns of Massachusetts Bay. To economic
causes were added the rivalries of strong-willed men, such as Hooker
and John Cotton, and a dislike of some of the autocratic and
theocratic features of the government of Massachusetts. These
colonists from Watertown, Dorchester, and Cambridge, who were
settled in Wethersfield, Windsor, and Hartford, soon absorbed the
small number of Plymouth people and kept the Dutch confined to their
trading post, which was finally abandoned in 1654. In 1638, the
Fundamental Orders, drafted under the inspiration of Hooker's sermon
of May 31 and largely the work of Roger Ludlow, were drawn up, and
in January, 1639, they were adopted by the three towns. Under this
document, sometimes called the first practical constitution, the
towns formed 'one publike State or Commonwealth.' Already (April 26,
1636) a general court had been held, in which Steel and Ludlow took
part; and it now became the supreme authority, with deputies from
the towns acting in concert. It is not without significance that
Thomas Hooker was John Pym's brother-in-law. To Pym, Hampden and
other reformers in the mother country, the main organ of political
power was the House of Commons. So here in Connecticut, the Governor
was merely a presiding officer, and the courts were creations of the
legislature by which their judgements could be set aside. Until the
Constituion of 1818 replaced the Fundamental Orders and the Charter
of 1662, the legislative body continued to dominate the executive
and the judicial. It is worthy of note that the preamble presumed a
close relation between Church and State, and that in 1659 the
general court imposed a property qualification for suffrage. There
was a distinct aristocratic element in this democracy.
In 1635, a second settlement, Saybrook, was established at the mouth
of the Connecticut River by order of an English company of lords and
gentlemen. among whom were Lord Say and Sele and Lord Brooke for
whom the Colony was named. John Winthrop, Jr., son of the Governor
of Massachusetts, was in charge of this enterprise, his chief aids
being Colonel George Fenwich and Captain Lion Gardiner. The Saybrook
group possessed a deed of conveyance from its patron, the Earl of
Warwick, under date of March 19, 1632; but Warwick never received a
patent to support the large claims later made by the Connecticut
Colony to lands from Narragansett Bay westward to the Pacific Ocean.
As the other Puritan lords and gentlemen became involved in the
Cromwell Revolution, the settlement did not thrive at first and was
important only as a fort and trading post. After several years of
negotiation, Fenwick sold his rights to the Connecticut Colony in
1644. There is no evidence that he had any authorization from the
company to convey the property, nor did Warwick's original deed
carry jurisdictional rights. At any rate, the separate existence of
Saybrook Colony came to an end in 1644, and Connecticut succeeded to
a double doubtful title.
The third settlement was made in 1638 at Quinnipiac (New Haven) by
colonists of the English merchant class, under the Reverend John
Davenport and Theophilus Eaton. Land was acquired by purchase from
Momauguin, chief of the local Indians, and the lack of a patent or
charter vexed the Colony from its inception until its absorption by
Connecticut in 1665. After living for a year under a plantation
covenant, the colonists organized a civil government in June 1639.
"Seven pillars" were chosen, chief of whom was Theophilus Eaton, the
elected magistrate. It was stipulated that all free burgesses should
be church members, a restriction which proved increasingly irksome
to the settlers. Internal dissatisfaction with the 'judicial laws of
God as they were declared by Moses' became an acute problem. These
'Blue Laws,' as they were called by the Tory historian, Samuel
Peters, in his 'General History of Connecticut' (1781), were Mosaic
only in capital cases, and in general closely resembled the Cotton
Code of Massachusetts. They contrasted unfavorably, however, with
the wider freedom of the Connecticut Colony, particularly in the
matter of franchise.
In 1643, New Haven was extended as a colony to include Milford
(1639), Guilford (1639), and Stamford (1641); Branford (1644), and
Southhold, Long Island (1640), later came under its jurisdiction.
Two attempts to settle a subordinate colony in Delaware were opposed
by the Swedes and the Dutch, and ended in failure. Although the
Colony was founded to promote the peculiarly Puritan combination of
piety and commercialism, its commercial enterprises did not thrive,
and its piety was over-zealous and repressive. Its shipping activity
was short-lived, and was featured by the loss at sea of the
'Wonder-working Providence' with several leading citizens on board.
This ship set sail for England in January, 1646, and was never heard
of again. Only as a 'phantom ship' did it appear miraculously in the
clouds before the sight of the grieved New Haveners. In general, the
colonists were forced to depend for a living on agriculture, in a
coastal region less well adapted to agricultural pursuits than the
fertile Connecticut Valley.
Source: American
Guide Series, Connecticut, Federal Writers' Project, 1938
Transcribed by Patricia Sabin
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