Colony of Connecticut

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A map of the colonies of Connecticut, New Haven, and Saybrook
The map shows Connecticut's western land claims

The Colony of Connecticut , originally River Colony , was founded on March 3, 1636 as a Puritan settlement. It was the predecessor of today's US state Connecticut . After the early fighting with the Dutch , the English gained permanent control of the colony in the late 1630s. The colony was then the scene of a bloody war between the English and Native Americans . She also played a significant role in establishing self-government in the New World through her legendary refusal to cede local authority to the Dominion of New England , better known as the Charter Oak Incident. Two other English colonies in what is now Connecticut's territory were merged with the Colony of Connecticut: Saybrook Colony in 1644 and New Haven Colony in 1662.

history

The first Europeans in the area were members of the Dutch expedition of explorer Adriaen Block , who in 1614 sailed through Long Island Sound and up the Connecticut River to what is now Hartford , where he met the Pequot who lived in the area. Dutch merchants from New Amsterdam operated since the 1620s fur trading posts along the Connecticut River (NDL. Versche rivier ), especially the Huy de Goede Hoop , House of Good Hope, located at the Park River was where it flows into the Connecticut River . This is where Hartford is now.

By 1630 the English, Holland's main rival in North America , had established numerous settlements on the east coast of New England , including the Plymouth Colony in 1620, the New Hampshire Colony in 1623, and the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630. King James I of England granted the Earl of Warwick , President of the Council for New England , the right to settle in the area west of Narragansett Bay to the Pacific Ocean . In 1631, the Earl of Warwick gave 15 Puritan Lords in England approval as a potential refuge in North America. The patentees (privileged) included William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele , Robert Greville, 2nd Baron Brooke , and Colonel George Fenwick. In 1635 the Patentees authorized John Winthrop, Jr. , son of the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, as governor of the "River Colony".

Winthrop arrived in Boston in October 1635 and heard shortly after that the Dutch were planning to take possession of the Connecticut River estuary at a point called the Pasbeshauke . To counter this, Winthrop sent a small barque (canoe) with 20 carpenters and other workers under the command of Lieutenant Edward Gibbons and Sergeant Simon Willard to the mouth of the Connecticut River. The expedition landed on November 24, 1635 near the river mouth, on the west bank of what is now Old Saybrook, and found the Dutch coat of arms nailed to a tree. They tore down the coat of arms and replaced it with a shield painted with a grinning face. They built a battery of cannons and built a small fort. When the Dutch ship returned a few days later, it sighted the cannons and the English ships, so it withdrew. Winthrop renamed the place in honor of Fiennes (Viscount Saye) and Lord Brooke and named it from now on Point Sayebrooke .

English settlers from the other New England colonies moved to the Connecticut Valley in the 1630s. In 1633, William Holmes led a group of settlers from the Plymouth Colony to the Connecticut Valley, where they founded the town of Windsor , a few miles north of the Dutch trading post. In 1644, John Oldham and a handful of Massachusetts families built makeshift homes in the Wethersfield area , a few miles south of the Dutch outpost. Over the next two years, 30 more families from Watertown , Massachusetts arrived and joined Oldham's supporters at Wethersfield. The English population in the area exploded in 1636 when clergyman Thomas Hooker led 100 settlers, including Richard Risley , with 130 head of cattle in a trek from Newton (now Cambridge ) from the Massachusetts Bay Colony to the banks of the Connecticut River. There they founded Hartford, which is opposite the Park River by the old Dutch fort. These settlers tried to found a new church with their own rules and statutes. The historian Henry S. Cohn wrote: “They felt a grudge against the power of the justices of the peace because they were not elected by the people. However, they also wanted to expand their property ... "

In 1637 the three Connecticut River cities, Windsor, Hartford and Wethersfield formed a joint government because of the battle in the Pequot War . In the summer of 1638 the cities drew up their Fundamental Orders , in which they laid down their laws, separation of powers and the structure of government. These were accepted on January 14, 1639 by the Connecticut Council and entered into the official records by Thomas Welles . Connecticut was granted a royal charter in 1662 and became an official crown colony .

The New Haven Colony was a separate entity. It was merged with Connecticut by the charter of 1662, with the citizens of New Haven not voting in favor until January 5, 1665. The main reason was the strong pressure from England, which resulted from the fact that New Haven accommodated three of the judges who sentenced King Charles I to death in 1649. When the Charter was later to be confiscated, a citizen hid it in an oak trunk (the Charter Oak ).

The New Haven Colony made clear its claim to all land east and west of the Delaware River in a 1641 treaty with the Lenape tribe . The colony then established the first settlement of its kind in modern Philadelphia . The residents of New Sweden and New Amsterdam thwarted attempts to settle in their areas. While New Haven later gave up its independence, the Lenape Treaty formed the basis of Connecticut's " sea ​​to sea " claim to all land east and west of the Delaware from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean.

Leading personalities

Thomas Hooker , a prominent Puritan pastor, and Governor John Haynes of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, who led 100 people to Hartford in 1636, are often believed to be the founders of the Colony of Connecticut. Hooker's sermon on government policy to his ward on May 31, 1638 influenced those who would draft the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut that year. The Fundamental Orders may well have been drafted by Roger Lodlow of Windsor, the only trained lawyer who lived in Connecticut in the 1630s, and then entered into the official records by Thomas Welles.

Reverend John Davenport and the merchant Theophilus Eaton are believed to be the founders of the New Haven Colony, which was incorporated into the Colony of Connecticut in the 1660s.

In the colony's early years, governors could not serve consecutive terms. That was also the reason why the governorship rotated between John Haynes and Edward Hopkins , both of whom are from Hartford , for over 20 years . George Wyllys, Thomas Welles, and John Webster, also men of Hartford, also served as governors for brief terms in the 1640s and 1650s.

John Winthrop Jr. of New London , the son of the founder of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, played an important role in consolidating independent settlements on the Connecticut River into a single colony. He was also governor of Connecticut between 1659 and 1675. Winthrop was also instrumental in securing the 1662 colonial charter that united New Haven with Connecticut. His son Fitz-John Winthrop also served as governor of the colony for ten years starting in 1698.

Roger Lodlow was a lawyer who graduated from Oxford and was an early lieutenant governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony who petitioned the General Court for the right to settle in the area. Ludlow also led the March Commission on settlement disputes over land rights. He is also considered a co-author of the Fundamental Order of Connecticut (1650) in collaboration with Hooker, Winthrop, and others. Ludlow was Connecticut's first lieutenant governor.

William Leete, of Guilford, was the governor of New Haven Colony before the colony merged with Connecticut. After John Winthrop's death in 1675, he succeeded him as Governor of the Colony of Connecticut. He is also the only man who was governor of New Haven and Connecticut.

Robert Treat of Milford was governor of the colony before and after it was accepted into Sir Edmund Andros ' Dominion of New England. His father, Richard Treat , was one of the colony's original patentees.

The colony enjoyed a number of strong governors throughout the 18th century, many re-elected annually until they died. After Fitz-John Winthrop's death, Gurdon Saltonstall , Winthrop's pastor in New London, was elected governor. Saltonstall was the only pastor to become Governor of Connecticut, refuting the common misconception that no Puritan minister could hold political office. After Saltonstall's death, Lieutenant Governor Joseph Talcott of Hartford became governor. Lieutenant Governor Jonathan Law of Milford succeeded Talcott's death in this position. When Jonathan Law passed away, Lieutenant Governor Roger Wolcott of Windsor became governor. Wolcott was the father of Oliver Wolcott , the signatory of the American Declaration of Independence . He was also voted out of office in 1754 for his role in the Spanish ship fall. Wolcott's successor was Thomas Fitch from Norwalk . He led the colony through the Seven Years War , but was himself elected from office in 1766 because he did not speak out clearly enough against the Stamp Act . William Pitkin of Hartford (now East Hartford ), the man who beat Fitch, was a leader in the Sons of Liberty and also the cousin of former Governor Roger Wolcott. Pitkin died in office in 1769 and was replaced by Lieutenant Governor Jonathan Trumbull senior , a Lebanon merchant . Trumbull, also a supporter of the Sons of Liberty, was also elected governor after the War of Independence and remained in that position until 1784 when he resigned, one year after the signing of the Paris Treaty of 1783, which guaranteed the United States independence from Great Britain .

The governors of the Colony of Connecticut

Between 1639 and 1776, the following persons held the office of governor of the Colony of Connecticut:

The list of governors for the US state of Connecticut can be found here .

Role of religion

Like the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Connecticut was founded by Puritans who founded the Congregational Church , the state church of the colony. Tax money supported their pastors; and colonists who did not attend Sunday services were fined. Until 1708, the Congregational Church was the only legal religious group in Connecticut. That year, however, the colony recognized "deliberate deviations" and waived certain other religious communities, particularly the Anglican and Baptist communities , to pay taxes in support of the state church, provided, of course, that they contributed to their own church. In 1708, the colony also adopted the Saybrooke Platform , which took away the church's sovereignty over local congregations and placed it in the hands of colony-wide associations that controlled the pastors.

In 1701 the General Assembly decided to found the Collegiate School with the task of training new parish pastors for the colony. After being housed in Killingworth , Saybrook and Wethersfield, the school finally found its permanent home in New Haven in 1716 . In 1718 there was a substantial donation from Elihu Yale , a wealthy English businessman who was born in Boston , so the institute name was changed to Yale College . There was a religious argument at Yale in the early 1720s when the school principal Rev. Timothy Cutler , as well as one of the teachers and two neighboring pastors, were accused of converting to Anglicanism. Determined to enforce Orthodoxy in the institute, the school administration dismissed the Rev. Cutler and the teacher in 1722. It also passed a resolution that demanded that in the future all rectors and teachers must express their consent to the Saybrook Platform.

The Great Awakening sent a shock wave through the colony in the mid-18th century, dividing the Congregational Church. Those who followed the Awakening were called New Lights , while those who refused were called Old Lights . Dissatisfied with the often sober service of their active pastors, the New Lights tried to form their own religious societies or churches in many cities. Often the Old Lights resisted these efforts, arguing that the New Lights were neither factual (because of the emotional nature of their ministry) nor homogeneous (as they continued to be congregationalists). In 1741, the Old Lights attempted to suppress the Awakening by the General Assembly passing a law prohibiting traveling pastors from preaching in a Connecticut city without an invitation from the city pastor. Many historians believe that this law was the spark that led to the creation of Issue Politics in the colony.

During the American Revolutionary War , many colonial Anglicans, most of whom lived in Fairfield County , remained loyalists . An Anglican, Moses Dunbar of Bristol , was convicted of treason and hanged for being a loyalist.

Congregationalism persisted through the revolutionary period as the State Church of Connecticut, although over time more denominations were allowed as "deliberately deviating". With the adoption of Connecticut's Constitution of 1818, the Congregational Church was abolished and there was a separation of church and state in Connecticut.

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The word Pasbeshauke comes from the Algonquian language and means “point at the river mouth”.
  2. ^ Henry S. Cohn: Connecticut Colonial History 1636–1776. Connecticut State Library.