When was Connecticut settled?
Connecticut Colony
The Connecticut Colony or Colony of Connecticut, originally known as the Connecticut River Colony or simply the River Colony, was an English colony in North America that became the state of Connecticut. It was organized on March 3, 1636 as a settlement for a Puritan congregation, and the English permanently gained control of the region in 1637 after struggles with the Dutch. The colony was later the scene of a bloody war between the colonists and Pequot Indians known as the Pequot War. Connecticut Colony played a significant role in the establishment of self-government in the New World with its refusal to surrender local authority to the Dominion of New England, an event known as the Charter Oak incident which occurred at Jeremy Adams' inn and tavern.
History of slavery in Connecticut
The exact date of the first African slaves in Connecticut is unknown, but the narrative of Venture Smith provides some information about the life of northern slavery in Connecticut. Another early confirmed account of slavery in the colony came in 1638 when several native prisoners were taken during the Pequot War were exchanged in the West Indies for African slaves. Such exchanges become common in subsequent conflicts.
Jeremy Adams
Jeremy Adams, also known as Jeremiah Adams (1604/5August 11, 1683), was one of the first settlers of Hartford, Connecticut. He was also the founder and first proprietor of Colchester, Connecticut, which was established on land owned by Adams, known as "Jeremiah's Farme".
History of Connecticut
According to the 1650 Treaty of Hartford with the Dutch, the western boundary of Connecticut ran north from the west side of Greenwich Bay "provided the said line come not within of Hudson River." On the other hand, Connecticut's original charter in 1662 granted it all the land to the "South Sea" (i.e. the Pacific Ocean).
History of Massachusetts
Consternation ensued. Abortive pleas to England were made in 1702. In 1713, a joint commission awarded control of Springfield-area towns to Massachusetts (without consulting the residents of those towns), compensating Connecticut with an equal amount of land further north. But the inhabitants of the Connecticut River border towns petitioned to be part of Connecticut in 1724, perhaps due to high taxes in Massachusetts or the greater civil liberties granted in the Connecticut charter.
Greenwich, Connecticut
The town of Greenwich was settled in 1640. One of the founders was Elizabeth Fones Winthrop, daughter-in-law of John Winthrop, founder and Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. What is now called Greenwich Point was known for much of the area's early history as "Elizabeth's Neck" in recognition of Elizabeth Fones and their 1640 purchase of the Point and much of the area now known as Old Greenwich. Greenwich was declared a township by the General Assembly in Hartford on May 11, 1665.
History of Connecticut
Reverend Thomas Hooker and the Rev. Samuel Stone led a group of about 100 who, in 1636, founded the settlement of Hartford, named for Stone's place of birth: Hertford, in England. Called today "the Father of Connecticut," Thomas Hooker was a towering figure in the early development of colonial New England. He was one of the great preachers of his time, an erudite writer on Christian subjects, the first minister of Cambridge, Massachusetts, one of the first settlers and founders of both the city of Hartford and the state of Connecticut, and cited by many as the inspiration for the "Fundamental Orders of Connecticut," cited by some as the world's first written democratic constitution that established a representative government.
List of colonial governors of Connecticut
The Saybrook Colony was established in late 1635 at the mouth of the Connecticut River in present day Old Saybrook, Connecticut by John Winthrop the Younger, son of Massachusetts Bay Colony founder and governor John Winthrop. The former was designated governor by the original settlers who included George Fenwick and Lion Gardiner. They claimed possession of the land via a deed of conveyance from Robert Rich, 2nd Earl of Warwick. The colony was named in honor of Puritan Lords Saye (William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele) and Brooke (Robert Greville, 2nd Baron Brooke), who were prominent Parliamentarians and the colony's principal investors.
The colony was little more than a single community. It came under the "de facto" governorship upon the arrival of Fenwick, who was the only signer of the deed to actually live the colony. In 1644 Fenwick conveyed the right of government to the flourishing Connecticut Colony, although issues surrounding this transfer led to litigation over property rights afterward. Fenwick returned to England and served in the English Civil War, and Winthrop continued to be active in Connecticut politics.
Hartford–Springfield
Since their respective foundings in 1635 and 1636, Hartford and Springfield have possessed a common Connecticut River heritage – both were among the original four settlements of the Connecticut Colony; however, an early legal dispute between two of the cities' Founding Fathers led the settlements to side with different colonies. In 1638, Springfield founder William Pynchon became embroiled in a legal dispute with one of the Connecticut Colony's leading citizens, Captain John Mason. Mason charged Pynchon—and the settlement of Springfield—with dominating the corn and beaver pelt trade with the Natives, to the detriment of Hartford and the Connecticut Colony. The dispute, which Pynchon and Springfield lost in 1638, led to Springfield's annexing itself to Massachusetts instead of aligning with its more geographically and ideologically compatible neighbor, Connecticut. Only since the early 2000s have Hartford and Springfield – the two great cities on the Connecticut River – started to collaborate closely, i.e. as the Knowledge Corridor Partnership.
New Fairfield, Connecticut
In 1724, colonial settlers from Fairfield, Connecticut received approval from the General Assembly of the Colony of Connecticut to establish a new township. According to one account, they negotiated with Chief Squantz of the Schaghticoke tribe of Algonquian lineage. Alternatively, it is told that they did not negotiate with Chief Squantz because he moved to the north end of Squantz Pond land area and refused to "sell" the township of New Fairfield. They returned in the Spring of 1725, but found that Chief Squantz had died during the winter. His four sons and heirs refused to sign the deeds. It was not until four years later that the white men called "The Proprietors" finally got the drawn marks of several other native people who may not have had authority to sell the land. They "purchased" a 31,000 acre tract of land that is now New Fairfield and Sherman, for the equivalent of about 300 dollars and on April 24, 1729, The deed was recorded on May 9, 1729, and is now deposited in the archives of the state capital in Hartford, Connecticut.
Guilford, Connecticut
First settled by Europeans in 1639 after being purchased from Native American leader Wequash, Guilford is considered by some to have the third largest collection of historic homes in New England, with important buildings from the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. There are five historic house museums, including Dudley Farm and the Henry Whitfield House (1639), the oldest dwelling house in Connecticut and the oldest stone house built by English settlers in North America. The Comfort Starr House (1645–46) is one of the oldest wooden framed private dwellings in Connecticut, and one of the few houses remaining of the original signers who settled Guilford.
History of West Haven, Connecticut
The Quinnipiac, Pequot, and Mohegan Native American tribes spent summers near the West Haven green and Morse Park, and as far inland as Maltby Lakes. Before New Haven was colonized in 1638 by five hundred settlers following Reverend John Davenport from the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Dutch trader Adriaen Block noted the high mounds of oyster shells along the shoreline while exploring in 1614.
Connecticut River
The Connecticut River Valley's central location, fertile soil, and abundant natural resources made it the target of centuries of border disputes, beginning with Springfield's defection from the Connecticut Colony in 1641, which brought the Massachusetts Bay Colony to the river. Conflicting royal treaties of 1764 sparked the river's east-siders to unite with Ethan Allen and the west-siders against New York and the British. The 1783 Treaty of Paris created a disputed border with Canada from the Connecticut's "northernmost headwaters". A 1933 U.S. Supreme Court decision settled a contentious boundary dispute between Vermont and New Hampshire. The Connecticut River's history is characterized by both political intrigue and technological innovation.
Samuel Keeler
Samuel Keeler (1656 – May 19, 1713) was a member of the House of Representatives of the Colony of Connecticut from Norwalk in the sessions of October 1701, October 1703, May 1704, May 1706, May 1709 and October 1709. He is listed as a founding settler of Ridgefield, Connecticut on the founders monument in Ye Burying Ground cemetery in Ridgefield.
Trumbull, Connecticut
The area comprising the town of Trumbull was occupied by the Paugusset Indian nation for thousands of years before English colonists arrived here during the Great Migration from England and established the town of Stratford, Connecticut in 1639.
New Haven County, Connecticut
As established in 1666, New Haven County consisted of the towns of Milford, New Haven, and Guilford. The town of Wallingford was established in 1670 in unincorporated area north of New Haven and formally added to New Haven County in 1671. In 1675, the town of Derby was established north of Milford. In 1686, the town of Waterbury was established, but was assigned as part of Hartford County. Waterbury was transferred to New Haven County in 1728. In 1722, most of northwestern Connecticut (except for the town of Litchfield) was placed under the jurisdiction of New Haven County. Eight years later, in 1730, the eastern half of northwestern Connecticut was transferred to the jurisdiction of Hartford County. By mid-1738, with the exception of the towns of New Milford, Sharon, and Salisbury, the entire territory of northwestern Connecticut was under Hartford County. In 1751, Litchfield County was constituted consisting of all the towns in northwestern Connecticut. Between 1780 and 1807, several more towns were established along the northern boundary of New Haven County, resulting in the alteration of the limits of the county. The final boundary alteration leading to the modern boundary resulted from the establishment of the town of Middlebury on October 8, 1807.
History of the Connecticut Constitution
The English Parliament restored the monarchy in 1660, and King Charles II assumed the English throne. Connecticut had never been officially recognized as a colony by the British government, so the General Court determined that the independence of Connecticut must be legitimized. Governor John Winthrop, Jr. was sent as an emissary to negotiate with the English government, and set sail for England on July 23, 1661. He proved successful in his mission, and the English attorney general approved a bill for incorporation of the Connecticut Charter. The document was returned to Connecticut after being officially sealed and registered, and was adopted by the General Court on October 9, 1662.
Connecticut Colony
Governor John Haynes of the Massachusetts Bay Colony led 100 people to Hartford in 1636. He and Puritan minister Thomas Hooker are often considered the founders of the Connecticut colony. Hooker delivered a sermon to his congregation on May 31, 1638 on the principles of government, and it influenced those who wrote the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut later that year. The Fundamental Orders may have been drafted by Roger Ludlow of Windsor, the only trained lawyer living in Connecticut in the 1630s; they were transcribed into the official record by secretary Thomas Welles. The Rev. John Davenport and merchant Theophilus Eaton led the founders of the New Haven Colony, which was absorbed into Connecticut Colony in the 1660s.
New London County, Connecticut
New London County in 1666 consisted of the towns of Stonington, Norwich, New London, and Saybrook. The "Homonoscet Plantation" was settled in March 1663, at first as Kenilworth; but it was incorporated as the town of Killingworth in 1667. Several new towns were incorporated and added to New London over the next few decades: Preston in 1687, Colchester in 1699, and Lebanon in 1700. The settlements along the Quinebaug Valley were placed in New London County in 1697, and incorporated as Plainfield in 1699. By 1717, more towns were established in northeastern Connecticut and added to New London County between the Quinebaug Valley and the Rhode Island border.
History of Hartford, Connecticut
The first English settlers arrived in 1635. Pastor Thomas Hooker and Governor John Haynes led 100 settlers with 130 head of cattle in a trek from Newtown (now Cambridge, Massachusetts) in the Massachusetts Bay Colony and started their settlement just north of the Dutch fort. The settlement was originally called Newtown, but was changed to Hartford in 1637 to honor the English town of Hertford the explorer also created the town of Windsor (created in 1633). These towns have been here for over 375 years.
Fundamental Orders of Connecticut
In the year of 1635, a group of Puritans and others who were dissatisfied with the rate of Anglican reforms sought to establish an ecclesiastical society subject to their own rules and regulations. The Massachusetts General Court granted them permission to settle the cities of Windsor, Wethersfield, and Hartford. Ownership of the land was called into dispute by the English holders of the Warwick Patent of 1631. The Massachusetts General Court established the March Commission to mediate the dispute, and named Roger Ludlow as its head. The Commission named eight magistrates from the Connecticut towns to implement a legal system. The March commission expired in March 1636, after which the settlers continued to self-govern.
East Windsor, Connecticut
In 1633, Settlers laid claim to the area now known as Windsor which included East Windsor. No English settlers lived on the east side of the river. The first English settler in what is today known as East Windsor, was William Pynchon, the founder of Springfield, Massachusetts. In 1636, he erected a warehouse for his settlement's transshipment of goods at what is now known as "Warehouse Point". Warehouse Point served as the southern border of Springfield, Massachusetts, for 132 years — until 1768 — when Warehouse Point, Connecticut, was annexed by the Connecticut Colony. Pynchon selected the site of Warehouse Point because of its location near the Enfield Falls — the first major falls in the Connecticut River, where all seagoing vessels were forced to terminate their voyages, and then transship to smaller shallops. By constructing a warehouse at Warehouse Point, Pynchon essentially forced all northern Connecticut River business to run through him and his settlement at Springfield.
Fundamental Orders of Connecticut
On May 29, 1638, Ludlow wrote to Massachusetts Governor Winthrop that the colonists wanted to "unite ourselves to walk and lie peaceably and lovingly together." Ludlow and other principals drafted the Fundamental Orders, which were adopted on January 14, 1639 OS (January 24, 1639 NS) and established Connecticut as a self-ruled colony. Major John Mason was a magistrate and is credited with being one of the writers of this document.
Simsbury, Connecticut
In 1633, Windsor was the second town in Connecticut settled by Europeans and the first English settlement (the first European settlement being Huys de Goede Hoop, established by the Dutch in the Hartford area as a frontier settlement for the New Netherland Colony ten years earlier). For some time, the area of Massaco was considered "an appendix to the towne of Windsor." Settlers in Windsor forested and farmed in the area, but did not come to Massaco permanently for a number of years. In 1642, the General Court [of the colony of Connecticut] ordered that:
Connecticut Indian Land Claims Settlement
The Pequot War (1634–1638) all but exterminated the Pequot. The English colonists divided surviving captives, assigning them to their allies, the Mohegan and Narragansett tribes. In 1651, John Winthrop the Younger persuaded the Connecticut Colony to create a 500-acre reservation for the Pequot in Noank, removing them from their previous places of residence. In 1666, the Connecticut General Assembly voted to create a 2,000-acre reservation for the "western" Pequot (the group previously in the custody of the Mohegan) in Ledyard, Connecticut; the eastern Pequot were given 280 acres in present-day North Stonington, Connecticut. By 1790 (the year that Congress passed the first Nonintercourse Act), the Ledyard reservation had been reduced to 1,000 acres, due to sales by white supervisors. In 1855, Connecticut sold 800 of the remaining acres at $10/acre, putting the money into a state-administered trust account for the Pequot people.
Union, Connecticut
The first European Settlement in Union was in 1727, making Union the last Connecticut town east of the Connecticut River to be settled. The first settler was James McNall of Ireland. He was closely followed by his brother William. The town was incorporated in October 1734. The name Union designates "union of lands".
Danbury, Connecticut
Danbury was settled by colonists in 1685, when eight families moved from what are now Norwalk and Stamford, Connecticut. The Danbury area was then called "Pahquioque" by its namesake, the Algonquian-speaking Pahquioque Native Americans (they are believed to have been a band of the Paugusset people), who occupied lands along the Still River. Bands were often identified by such geographic designation but they were associated with the larger nation by culture and language).
Connecticut Indian Land Claims Settlement
The Connecticut Indian Land Claims Settlement was an Indian Land Claims Settlement passed by the United States Congress in 1983. The settlement act ended a lawsuit by the Mashantucket Pequot Tribe to recover 800 acres of their 1666 reservation in Ledyard, Connecticut. The state sold this property in 1855 without gaining ratification by the Senate. In a federal land claims suit, the Mashantucket Pequot charged that the sale was in violation of the Nonintercourse Act that regulates commerce between Native Americans and non-Indians.
Seal of Connecticut
The grapevines are said to represent more specifically either early towns or the early individual colonies. Some 19th-century versions of the Connecticut Great Seal show several grapevines. The best answer today is that the grapevines should be taken to represent the three original colonies of Connecticut: (Hartford), Quinnipiac (New-Haven), and Saybrook, though it can also represent the first three settlements of the Connecticut colony proper- Windsor, Hartford, and Wethersfield, as New Haven and Saybrook were reluctant additions to Connecticut.
New Preston, Connecticut
The signature of Chief Waramaug, who led the Wyantenock tribe in the early 18th century, appears on several local Colonial-era property records, including "The New Milford North Purchase," which encompassed a substantial swath of southern Litchfield County, including contemporary New Preston. Colonists settled New Preston in 1741, and the General Assembly of the Connecticut Colony granted a petition for the establishment of the New Preston Ecclesiastical Society in 1753. In April 1778 the 270 families living in the area petitioned the General Assembly to be incorporated as a town. The petition was granted in January of the following year, incorporating the Town of Washington from the parishes of Judea and New Preston and taking from the towns of Woodbury, Litchfield, Kent and New Milford. The action marked the first establishment of a municipality in Connecticut after the Declaration of Independence was signed. The town was named after George Washington, who, in his capacity as Commander of the Continental Army during the American Revolution, passed through the area several times. In May 1781, George Washington slept in New Preston at the Cogswell Tavern, which still stands on present-day Christian Street and is used as a private residence.
Restoration in the English colonies
New England, with its Puritan settlement, had supported the Commonwealth and the Protectorate. Acceptance of the Restoration was reluctant in some quarters as it highlighted the failure of puritan reform. Rhode Island declared in October 1660 and Massachusetts lastly in August 1661. New Haven provided refuge for Regicides such as Edward Whalley, William Goffe and John Dixwell and would be subsequently merged into Connecticut in 1662, perhaps in punishment. John Winthrop, a former governor of Connecticut, and one of whose sons had been a captain in Monck's army, went to England at the Restoration and in 1662 obtained a Royal Charter for Connecticut with New Haven annexed to it.
Coventry, Connecticut
The first house in Coventry was said to have been built near the shore of Lake Wangumbaug by Nathaniel Rust, a Hartford, Connecticut, man, originally from Northampton, Massachusetts. The entire Rust family is said to have made their final move to Coventry from Massachusetts in a group of a dozen families in 1709. Along with Nathaniel Rust, the names of some of the earliest settlers were David Lee, Thomas Root, Samuel Gurley, Ebenezer Searl, Joseph Petty, Benjamin James and Benjamin Carpenter. Four other settlers were also from Northampton and two from Reading.
Fairfield, Connecticut
Fairfield was one of the two principal settlements of the Connecticut Colony in southwestern Connecticut (the other was Stratford). The town line with Stratford was set in May 1661 by John Banks, an early Fairfield settler, Richard Olmstead, and Lt. Joseph Judson, who were both appointed as a committee by the Colony of Connecticut. The town line with Norwalk was not set until May 1685.
Middletown, Connecticut
Middletown is a city located in Middlesex County, Connecticut, along the Connecticut River, in the central part of the state, south of Hartford. In 1650, it was incorporated as a town under its original Native American name, Mattabeseck. It received its present name in 1653. Middletown was included within Hartford County upon its creation on May 10, 1666. In 1784, the central settlement was incorporated as a city distinct from the town. Both were included within newly formed Middlesex County in May 1785. In 1923, the City of Middletown was consolidated with the Town, making the city limits extensive.
Bridgeport, Connecticut
Bridgeport was inhabited by the Paugussett native American tribe at the time of its English colonization. The earliest European communal settlement was in the historical Stratfield district, along US Route 1; known in colonial times as the King's Highway. Very closeby, Mount Grove Cemetery was laid out on what was a native village that extended past the 1650s. It is also an ancient Paugusett burial ground.
Mystic, Connecticut
Settlement grew slowly. The Connecticut government and Massachusetts Bay government began to quarrel over boundaries, thus causing some conflicting claims concerning governmental authority between the Mystic River and the Pawcatuck River. In the 1640s and 1650s, "Connecticut" referred to settlements located along the Connecticut River, as well as its claims in other parts of the region. Massachusetts Bay, however, claimed to have authority over Stonington and even into Rhode Island.
Fairfield, Connecticut
In 1635, Puritans and Congregationalists in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, were dissatisfied with the rate of Anglican reform, and sought to establish an ecclesiastical society subject to their own rules and regulations. The Massachusetts General Court granted them permission to settle in the towns of Windsor, Wethersfield, and Hartford which is an area now known as Connecticut.
Canterbury, Connecticut
The area was first settled in the 1680s as Peagscomsuck, consisting mainly of land north of Norwich, south of New Roxbury, Massachusetts (now Woodstock, Connecticut) and west of the Quinebaug River, Peagscomsuck Island and the Plainfield Settlement. In 1703 it was officially separated from Plainfield and named The Town of Canterbury. The town's name is a transfer from Canterbury, in England.
Mohegan Indians v. Connecticut
Connecticut was incorporated by royal charter in 1662, with its boundaries including the disputed lands. A 1681 treaty between the Mohegan and the colony acknowledged a Mohegan interest in the land; it provided that the colony would administer "Equal Justice" to the Mohegan "as our own people" if they "before hand declared their Subjection to our Laws." In 1687, the colony began granting the disputed land to settlers by legislation and orders in council.
New London, Ohio
The first permanent settlement at New London was made in 1816. The village was named after New London, Connecticut, the native home of a share of the early settlers. New London was incorporated in 1853.
Western Massachusetts
Western Massachusetts was originally settled by Native American societies, including the Pocomtuc, Nonotuck Mohawk, Nipmuck, and Mahican. The first European explorers to reach Western Massachusetts were English Puritans, who in 1635, at the request of William Pynchon, settled the land that they considered most advantageous for both agriculture and trading - in modern Agawam, adjacent to modern Metro Center, Springfield. In 1636, a group of English settlers—lured by the promise of a "great river" and the northeast's most fertile farmland—ventured to Springfield, where they established a permanent colony. Originally, this settlement was called "Agawam Plantation", and administered by the Connecticut Colony. (Springfield lies only 4 miles north of Connecticut; however, Agawam included lands as far south as Windsor Locks, as far north as Holyoke, and as far west as Westfield.) In 1640, Springfield voted to separate from the Connecticut Colony following a series of contentious incidents, and after a brief period of independence, decided to align with the coastal Massachusetts Bay Colony, thereby shaping the region's political boundaries. The Massachusetts Bay Colony settled the Connecticut River Valley's most fertile land - stretching from Windsor, Connecticut, (once part of Springfield,) to Northampton, Massachusetts - from 1636 to 1654.
Mohegan Indians v. Connecticut
English settlers arrived on the coast of Connecticut in the 1630s, coming into contact with the Mohegan people, who had been part of the Pequot. Following the Pequot War of 1637, in which the Mohegan had been allied with the English in the near destruction of the Pequot, the "sachem" Uncas ceded all Mohegan lands to the colonists in 1640, with the exception of a reserve of farms and hunting grounds.
Mary and John
The passengers initially founded Dorchester, Massachusetts. The voyage, along with an 11-ship flotilla led by John Winthrop that departed England in April 1630, greatly strengthened the two-year-old Massachusetts Bay Colony. In late 1635, about 2/3 of the passengers relocated to Connecticut where they were principal founders of the Connecticut River farming community of Windsor, Connecticut and participated in the organization of the first Connecticut colonial government in early 1639 Fundamental Orders of Connecticut in participation with Hartford and Wethersfield, CT.
Old Connecticut Path
In lean years of the early 1630s, when the Massachusetts Bay Colony ran short of grain, Nipmuck farmers in the valley of the Connecticut River loaded some of their abundant surplus maize into birch-bark backpacks and trod a familiar route to the settlements at the mouth of the Charles River, where they traded food for European goods made of copper and iron and woollen cloth. Fur traders and the exploratory party of John Oldham (1633) penetrated this first of the trails west into the continent's interior. In 1635, some settlers from Watertown took this route when they removed to Wethersfield, Connecticut.
Stratford, Connecticut
Stratford is one of many towns in the northeastern American colonies founded as part of the Great Migration in the 1630s when Puritan families fled an increasingly polarized England in the decade before the civil war between Charles I and Parliament. Some of the Stratford settlers were from families who had first moved from England to the Netherlands to seek religious freedom, like their predecessors on the "Mayflower", and decided to come to the New World when their children began to adopt the Dutch culture and language.
Nathaniel Ely
Nathaniel Ely (also Nathaniel Eli) (1605 – December 25, 1675) was a founding settler of Hartford and Norwalk, Connecticut. He served as a deputy of the General Court of the Connecticut Colony from Norwalk in the October 1656 session.
History of Connecticut
Various Algonquian tribes long inhabited the area prior to European settlement. The Dutch were the first Europeans in Connecticut. In 1614 Adriaen Block explored the coast of Long Island Sound, and sailed up the Connecticut River at least as far as the confluence of the Park River, site of modern Hartford. By 1623, the new Dutch West India Company regularly traded for furs there and ten years later they fortified it for protection from the Pequot Indians, as well as from the expanding English colonies. The site was named "House of Hope" (also identified as "Fort Hoop", "Good Hope" and "Hope"), but encroaching English colonists made them agree to withdraw in the 1650 Treaty of Hartford. By 1654 they were gone, before the English took over New Netherland in 1664.
Connecticut
The first European explorer in Connecticut was Dutchman Adriaen Block, who explored the region in 1614. Dutch fur traders then sailed up the Connecticut River, which they called Versche Rivier ("Fresh River"), and built a fort at Dutch Point in Hartford that they named "House of Hope" ().
Tobyhanna Township, Monroe County, Pennsylvania
In 1754, settlers from Connecticut (Yankees) claimed land in the Wyoming Valley, now the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre area. The Charter of 1662 of King Charles II of England reads, "We, of Our abundant Grace, . . . have given, granted, and confirmed. . . unto the said Governor and Company. . . all that Part of Our Dominions in New-England . . . bounded on the East by . . . Narraganset-Bay, . . . on the North by the Line of the Massachusetts-Plantation; and on the South by the Sea; and in Longitude . . . From the said Narraganset-Bay on the East, to the South Sea on the West Part . . .". The South Sea is now called the Pacific Ocean. Thus, settlers in Connecticut felt they had claim to the land. Pennsylvania settlers (Pennamites) laid claim to the same land by right of a royal charter. Thirdly, the Iroquois claimed the land as theirs, as they had been living there before either group of settlers arrived. Unrest was largely minimal until 1769, when Connecticut established its first permanent settlement. The resulting conflicts were eventually dubbed the Yankee-Pennamite Wars.
East Hampton, Connecticut
The European-derived first settlers of the area arrived in 1739 by sea from Eastham, Massachusetts. They traveled up the Connecticut River to Middle Haddam parish between the two adjacent towns of Middletown and Haddam. Led by Isaac Smith, some of these settlers went on to the hills near Lake Pocotopaug, the present-day location of East Hampton. In 1746, the settlers named their community Easthampton parish after their former home of Eastham. In 1767, the community was separated from Middletown incorporated by the Connecticut General Assembly as the township of Chatham, after Chatham, Medway due to the important shipbuilding industries that both places had in common. An iron forge at the outlet of Lake Pocotopaug was one of the earliest in Connecticut. The forge supplied the local needs and the shipbuilding industry on the banks of the Connecticut River. Shipbuilding up the Connecticut River was given a boost during the War of 1812 when the British raided a town at the mouth of the Connecticut River. The knowledge gained in forging and casting iron was later used for creating other items including waffle irons. Bell making continued to grow during the 1800s with firms utilizing the water power of the Pocotopaug Stream. After the Civil War numerous coffin trimming concerns lined the stream. Some firms changed focus over time such as the Watrous Mfg. Co. which started making just bells, later making coffin trimmings, and still later making bell toys.
History of Brookfield, Connecticut
The History of Brookfield, Connecticut extends back roughly three centuries.
Before the English settled the area that became Brookfield, Connecticut, it was inhabited by the Wyantenuck and Paugusset Native Americans, members of the Algonquin Federation. According to early deeds for property on both sides of the Still River, "Sachem Pokono" the son of Sachem Waramaug who met the first settlers to Brookfield in 1710 (or "Pocono") led the local Indians for many years. Indian relics are still found in Brookfield.
Somers, Connecticut
Somers was originally part of the Agawam Plantation in the 17th century. Agawam Plantation became Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1641 and in 1682, the Enfield Parish broke off from the Springfield settlement. In 1689, the first settler, Benjamin Jones, came to Somers in what was then East Enfield about a half mile from the current town center, as it was only a summer house and in the winter, he and his family returned to Enfield for several years though out of fear of the Native Americans. In 1711, several more families settled the Somers area to help start a village. The families of Kibbe, Pease, Root, and Megregory were the first to settle the area. The Village was given the name Wallop but was changed to East Enfield shortly after. In the year 1734, East Enfield became a town and was renamed Somers, after John Somers, 1st Baron Somers. In the year 1749, Somers joined the Connecticut Colony. The Four Town Fair which is usually held after the third weekend in September is one of the oldest fairs in the Country.
Connecticut River
The fourth English settlement along the Connecticut River came out of a 1635 scouting party commissioned by William Pynchon to find the most advantageous site for commerce and agriculture, hoping to found a city there. His scouts located the Pocumtuc village of Agawam, where the Bay Path trade route crossed the Connecticut River at two of its major tributaries—the Chicopee River to the east and Westfield River to the west—and just north of Enfield Falls, the river's first unnavigable waterfall. Pynchon surmised that traders using any of these routes would have to dock and change ships at his site, thereby granting the settlement a commercial advantage. It was initially named Agawam Plantation and was allied with the settlements to the south that became the state of Connecticut, but it switched allegiances in 1641 and was renamed Springfield in honor of Pynchon's native town in England.
Westport, Connecticut
The earliest known inhabitants of the Westport area as identified through archaeological finds date back 7,500 years. Records from the first white settlers report the Pequot Indians living in the area which they called "Machamux" translated by the colonialists as "beautiful land". Settlement by colonialists dates back to the five "Bankside Farmers"; whose families grew and prospered into a community that continued expanding. The community had its own ecclesiastical society, supported by independent civil and religious elements, enabling it to be independent from the Town of Fairfield. The settlers arrived in 1693, having followed cattle to the isolated area known to the Pequot as the "beautiful land". As the settlement expanded its name changed: it was briefly known as "Bankside" in 1693, officially named Green's Farm in 1732 in honor of Bankside Farmer John Green and in 1835 incorporated as the Town of Westport.
During the revolutionary war—on April 25, 1777, a 1,850 strong British force under the command of the Royal Governor of the Province of New York, Major General William Tryon landed on Compo Beach to destroy the Continental Army’s military supplies in Danbury. Minutemen from Westport and the surrounding areas crouched hiding whilst Tryon's troops passed and then launched an offensive from their rear. A statue on Compo beach commemorates this plan of attack with a crouching Minuteman facing away from the beach; looking onto what would have been the rear of the troops.
Equivalent Lands
Settlers in Springfield, Massachusetts had several disagreements with settlers from Hartford, Connecticut during the late 1630s when Connecticut Colony was just getting established, and the Springfield settlers decided to align themselves with the Massachusetts Bay Colony instead of Connecticut. As a result, Massachusetts Bay surveyed the border between Massachusetts and Connecticut in 1642, and took control of land as far south as Warehouse Point at Windsor Locks, Connecticut, the northernmost point on the Connecticut River controlled by the tides.
Windsor, Connecticut
The first group of 60 or more people were led by Roger Ludlow, primary framer of the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, having trekked overland from Dorchester, Massachusetts. They had arrived in the New World five years earlier on the ship "Mary and John" from Plymouth, England, and settled in Dorchester. Reverend Warham promptly renamed the Connecticut settlement "Dorchester". During the next few years, more settlers arrived from Dorchester, outnumbering and soon displacing the original Plymouth contingent, who returned to Plymouth in 1638 after selling their parcel to a Matthew Allyn of Hartford.
Connecticut River
In 1614, Dutch explorer Adriaen Block became the first European to chart the Connecticut River, sailing as far north as Enfield Rapids. He called it the "Fresh River" and claimed it for the Netherlands as the northeastern border of the New Netherland colony. In 1623, Dutch traders constructed a fortified trading post at the site of Hartford, Connecticut called the "Fort Huys de Hoop" ("Fort House of Hope").
New Haven, Connecticut
In 1664 New Haven became part of the Connecticut Colony when the two colonies were merged under political pressure from England, according to folklore as punishment for harboring the three judges (in reality, done in order to strengthen the case for the takeover of nearby New Amsterdam, which was rapidly losing territory to migrants from Connecticut). Some members of the New Haven Colony seeking to establish a new theocracy elsewhere went on to establish Newark, New Jersey.
History of New England
The Connecticut region was inhabited by the Mohegan and Pequot tribes prior to colonization. The Connecticut River Valley linked different tribes in cultural, linguistic, and political ways. The tribes grew maize, tobacco, kidney beans, squash, and Jerusalem artichoke. As early as 1600, French, Dutch, and English traders began to trade metal, glass, and cloth for local beaver pelts.
Meriden, Connecticut
Meriden was originally a part of the neighboring town of Wallingford. It was granted a separate meetinghouse in 1727, became a town in 1806 with over 1000 residents, and incorporated as a city in 1867 with just under 9000 residents. It was once proposed as the Connecticut state capital. It was named for the village of Meriden, West Midlands, England, near Birmingham.
Middletown, Connecticut
The land on the western bank of the Connecticut River where Middletown now lies was home to the Mattabesett Native Americans (also spelled "Mattabesec," "Mattabeseck," and "Mattabesek"); the area they inhabited—now Middletown and the surrounding area—was named after them. At the time the first European settlers arrived in the region, the Mattabesetts were a part of the group of tribes in the Connecticut Valley, under a single chief named Sowheag.
Plainville, Connecticut
Plainville first was inhabited by Europeans around 1650. By the 1660s the land was incorporated as land for nearby Farmington. In the year 1869, it separated from Farmington due to the distance of the town center and the growth of Plainville downtown due to the installation of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad and the Hartford, Providence, and Fishkill Railroad.
Connecticut
Connecticut's first European settlers were Dutchmen who established a small, short-lived settlement called Fort Hoop in Hartford at the confluence of the Park and Connecticut Rivers. Half of Connecticut was initially part of the Dutch colony New Netherland, which included much of the land between the Connecticut and Delaware Rivers, although the first major settlements were established in the 1630s by the English. Thomas Hooker led a band of followers from the Massachusetts Bay Colony and founded the Connecticut Colony; other settlers from Massachusetts founded the Saybrook Colony and the New Haven Colony. The Connecticut and New Haven colonies established documents of Fundamental Orders, considered the first constitutions in America. In 1662, the three colonies were merged under a royal charter, making Connecticut a crown colony. This was one of the Thirteen Colonies which rejected British rule in the American Revolution.
Wethersfield, Connecticut
Founded in 1634 by a Puritan settlement party of "10 Men" including John Oldham, Robert Seeley, Thomas Topping and Nathaniel Foote, Wethersfield is arguably the oldest town in Connecticut, depending on one's interpretation of when a remote settlement qualifies as a "town". Along with Windsor and Hartford, Wethersfield is represented by one of the three grapevines on the Flag of Connecticut, signifying the state's three oldest European settlements. The town took its name from Wethersfield, a village in the English county of Essex.
List of colonial governors of Connecticut
The Connecticut Colony was formed from the towns of Hartford, Windsor and Wethersfield. Between 1639 and 1655, consecutive terms were not allowed, so the governorship rotated between John Haynes and Edward Hopkins each year, except for 1642 when George Wyllys served.
Brookfield, Connecticut
Brookfield is a town in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States, situated within the southern foothills of the Berkshire Mountains. The population was 16,487 at the 2010 census. The town is located northeast of New York City, making it part of the New York metropolitan area. In July 2013, "Money" magazine ranked Brookfield the 26th-best place to live in the United States, and the best place to live in Connecticut. Brookfield was first settled in 1710 by John Muirwood, as well as other colonial founders including Hawley, Peck and Merwin. They bartered for the land from the Wyantenuck Nation and the Pootatuck Nation who were ruled under the Sachem Waramaug and Pocono. The purchase of the southern portion of town involved the current Municipal Center where Sachem Pocono then had his village and lived in an enormous palisade along the Still River. Eventually, when the town was settled, it was first established as the Parish of Newbury, which incorporated parts of neighboring Newtown and Danbury. The town of Brookfield was established in 1788. It was named after the first minister of the parish's Congregational church, Reverend Thomas Brooks.
Daniel Kellogg (settler)
Daniel Kellogg (also Daniel Kellogge) (February 1630 – December 1688) was a founding settler of Norwalk, Connecticut. He was a deputy of the Connecticut General Assembly of the Colony of Connecticut from Norwalk in the sessions of October 1670, May 1672, October 1674, October 1675, May 1677, October 1679, May 1680, and October 1683.
Connecticut River
The Mohegans dominated the region due north, where Hartford and its suburbs sit, particularly after allying themselves with the Colonists against the Pequots during the Pequot War of 1637. Their culture was similar to the Pequots, as they had split off from them and become their rivals some time prior to European exploration of the area. The agricultural Pocomtuc tribe lived in unfortified villages alongside the Connecticut River north of the Enfield Falls on the fertile stretch of hills and meadows surrounding Springfield, Massachusetts. The Pocomtuc village of Agawam eventually became Springfield, situated on the Bay Path where the Connecticut River meets the western Westfield River and eastern Chicopee River. The Pocomtuc villagers at Agawam helped Puritan explorers settle this site and remained friendly with them for decades, unlike tribes farther north and south along the Connecticut River. The region stretching from Springfield north to the New Hampshire and Vermont state borders fostered many agricultural Pocomtuc and Nipmuc settlements, with its soil enhanced by sedimentary deposits. Occasionally, these villages endured invasions from more aggressive confederated tribes living in New York, such as the Mohawk, Mahican, and Iroquois tribes.
History of New England
On March 3, 1636, the Connecticut Colony was granted a charter and established its own government, absorbing the nearby New Haven Colony. Vermont was still unsettled, and the territories of New Hampshire and Maine were governed by Massachusetts.
Coat of arms of Connecticut
The grapevines are said to represent more specifically either early towns or the early individual colonies. Some 19th-century versions of the Connecticut Great Seal show several grapevines. The best answer today is that the grapevines should be taken to represent the three original colonies of Connecticut: (Hartford), Quinnipiac (New-Haven), and Saybrook, though it can also represent the first three settlements of the Connecticut colony proper—Windsor, Hartford, and Wethersfield, as New Haven and Saybrook were reluctant additions to Connecticut.
Border disputes between New York and Connecticut
By contrast, the exploding population of the neighboring New England Colonies placed ever more farms and settlements across Connecticut and Long Island Sound. Connecticut Colony also based its claims on conquest. Following the end of the Pequot War in 1638, Connecticut had signed a treaty with the Massachusetts Bay Colony and the Mohegan and Narragansett tribes ceding all of the Pequot lands to Connecticut. The English also rejected the claim that Hudson's discovery secured the area for the Dutch: Hudson was an Englishman and had not been hired to explore the area, but had rather discovered it by accident.
List of Governors of Connecticut
Connecticut was one of the original Thirteen Colonies and was admitted as a state on January 9, 1788. Before it declared its independence, Connecticut was a colony of the Kingdom of Great Britain.
Connecticut in the American Civil War
Before the Civil War, Connecticut residents such as 
Leonard Bacon, Simeon Baldwin, Horace Bushnell, Prudence Crandall, Jonathan Edwards (the younger) and Harriet Beecher Stowe, were active in the abolitionist movement, and towns such as Farmington and Middletown were stops along the Underground Railroad.
Slavery in Connecticut had been gradually phased out beginning in 1797 with less than 100 slaves in Connecticut by 1820; slavery was not completely outlawed, however, until 1848.
University of Connecticut
The University of Connecticut (UConn) is a public land grant, National Sea Grant and National Space Grant research university in Storrs, Connecticut, United States. It was founded in 1881.
Robert Treat
When the Connecticut Charter of 1662 forced the New Haven Colony to merge with Connecticut in 1665, Treat led a group of dissidents who left the colony. They moved to New Jersey in 1666 where they were joined by other dissidents from Branford, Connecticut, another part of the former New Haven Colony. The dissidents from Branford were led by Abraham Pierson, Sr. Robert Treat wanted the new community to be named Milford, New Jersey. Pierson, a devout Puritan, preferred the name New Ark, and this place is now known as Newark. Robert himself returned to Milford, Connecticut in 1672 and lived there the rest of his life.
Chester, Connecticut
The Wangunks, a river tribe of Native Americans, occupied the land called Pattaconk prior to English settlement of the area in 1692. The town was formed from the northern quarter of Saybrook and incorporated in 1836. Back in 1769, Jonathan Warner was granted permission to operate a ferry across the Connecticut River that became the Chester-Hadlyme Ferry, the second-oldest continuously operating ferry service in Connecticut. Its location is currently a state historical landmark.
Equivalent Lands
In the 1690s, Connecticut Colony officials performed their own survey and discovered errors that were made in Massachusetts's 1642 survey, but it was not until 1713 that the two colonies cooperated together to survey correct boundaries. At that time, the surveyors found that Massachusetts Bay had offered Springfield settlers the right to that actually belonged to Connecticut; they had established themselves in and around the towns of Springfield, Westfield, Suffield, and other areas west of the Connecticut River, believing themselves to be in lands belonging to Massachusetts Bay. Most of those inhabiting the area did not want to change jurisdiction from Massachusetts to Connecticut, so they agreed that Massachusetts would retain administration over the settled lands and grant property to Connecticut in return of an equal number of acres, "as an equivalent to the said colony".
Connecticut Land Company
The Connecticut Land Company was a company set up by a group of private investors in 1795 with the aim of making a profit from land sales. Towards that end, the company bought a large portion of the eastern part of the Western Connecticut Reserves. However, poor company management and political uncertainty led to weak land sales, slow economic development, and ultimately company failure in 1809. Despite its short existence, the Connecticut Land Company was instrumental in the development of the region and left a lasting impact on the landscape. One of the most important legacies of the Connecticut Land Company was the establishment of the settlement of Cleveland.
Ethnic studies
Connecticut
Connecticut
The name Connecticut is derived from the Algonquian word that has been translated as "long tidal river" and "upon the long river", referring to the Connecticut River. The Connecticut region was inhabited by multiple Indian tribes before European settlement and colonization, including the Mohegans, the Pequots, and the Paugusetts.
Berlin, Connecticut
Berlin ( ) is a town in Hartford County, Connecticut, United States. The population was 19,866 at the 2010 census. It was incorporated in 1785. The geographic center of Connecticut is located in the town. Berlin is residential and industrial, and is served by the Amtrak station of the same name. Berlin also has two hamlets: Kensington and East Berlin.
Middletown, Connecticut
Plans for the colonial settlement were drawn up by the General Court in 1646; the first Europeans arrived from nearby Connecticut colonies in 1650. On September 11, 1651, the General Court of Connecticut established the town of "Mattabesett". A couple of years later in November of 1653, the settlement was renamed Middletown. It was chosen because the site was approximate halfway between Windsor and Saybrook on the Great River. Life was not easy among these early colonial Puritans; clearing the land and building homes, and tending farms in the rocky soil of New England was a labor-intensive ordeal. Law, too, was often harsh among the Puritans; offenses legally punishable by death in the Connecticut colonies included, "witchcraft, blasphemy, cursing or smiting of parents, and incorrigible stubbornness of children."
History of the Connecticut Constitution
Connecticut was founded by Congregationalists who split away from the Massachusetts colony between 1635 and 1636. The first settlers founded three towns on the Connecticut River in Windsor, Wethersfield, and Hartford, Connecticut. One of the main purposes of the Fundamental Orders was to formalize the relationship among these three towns. The foundation of the Fundamental Orders incorporated the religious background of the colony's founders. They called for "an orderly and decent government according to God" in attempts to pursue "the liberty and purity of the gospel of our Lord Jesus" and stipulated that "the Governor be always a member of some approved congregation".
John Oldham (colonist)
In 1633 or 1634, Oldham led a group of ten men (which included Captain Robert Seeley) along the Old Connecticut Path to establish Wethersfield, Connecticut, the first English settlement on the Connecticut River.
Catholic Church in the Thirteen Colonies
The first English settlement was established on the Connecticut River at Windsor by traders from the Plymouth Colony in 1633. In the same year the Dutch from New Amsterdam had sailed up the river and erected a trading house and fort where the city of Hartford now stands, a few miles below Windsor. The Dutch soon after withdrew, leaving the English to establish the first permanent settlements within the boundaries of Connecticut. In 1664 the New Haven Colony, then comprising the various settlements along the coast, was forced to unite with those in the Connecticut valley, thus forming one commonwealth thereafter known as Connecticut. The vast majority of the population remained distinctively English of Puritan origin. Congregationalism was the established religion supported by public taxation.
State censuses in the United States
Connecticut conducted censuses in 1756, 1761, 1774, and 1782, all of which were conducted before Connecticut become a U.S. state.
Wolcott, Connecticut
Farmingbury petitioned the Connecticut General Assembly in 1796, requesting that it be incorporated as an independent town distinct from Waterbury and Farmington. Assembly votes tallied up to a tie, half in favor and half against the proposal. The tie-breaking vote in favor of Farmingbury was cast by Lieutenant Governor Oliver Wolcott, and the lands of Farmingbury were officially ceded by Waterbury and Farmington to the new town. In honor of the Lieutenant Governor's deciding vote, the residents of Farmingbury renamed their newly incorporated town "Wolcott". The 1800 United States Census was the first census conducted after Wolcott's incorporation and counted 948 individuals living within the town.
Connecticut Colony
The original colonies along the Connecticut River and in New Haven were established by separatist Puritans who were connected with the Massachusetts and Plymouth colonies. They held Calvinist religious beliefs similar to the English Puritans, but they maintained that their congregations needed to be separated from the English state church. They had emigrated to New England during the Great Migration.
Glastonbury, Connecticut
Glastonbury is a town in Hartford County, Connecticut, United States, formally founded in 1693 with settlers first arriving in 1636. The town was named after Glastonbury in Somerset, England. Glastonbury is located on the banks of the Connecticut River, southeast of Hartford. The town center is defined by the U.S. Census Bureau as a census-designated place (CDP). The population was 34,427 at the 2010 census.
New Haven Colony
The New Haven Colony was a small English colony in North America from 1637 to 1664 in what is now the state of Connecticut.
History of Trumbull, Connecticut
Trumbull, a town in Fairfield County, Connecticut, in the New England region of the United States, was originally home to the Golden Hill Paugussett Indian Nation, and was colonized by the English during the Great Migration of the 1630s as a part of the coastal settlement of Stratford.
Coventry, Connecticut
The land was said to have originally been given to men from Hartford by Joshua, Indian sachem. The Connecticut General Assembly, held in Hartford in 1706, appointed William Pitkin, Joseph Tallcot, William Whiting and Richard Lord, as a committee with full power to lay out the bounds of the town and divisions of the land, to admit inhabitants. A 1711 revision added Nathaniel Rust to the committee and the task of procuring a minister of the gospel. The first church was established in October 1714.
Norwalk, Connecticut
Norwalk was settled in 1649, and is now the sixth most populous city in Connecticut. According to the 2010 United States Census the city had a population of 85,603; with an estimated population of 88,438 in 2016.
Washington, Connecticut
In 1734, Joseph Hurlbut settled the eastern section of what is now Washington, marking the beginning of the town's inhabitation by Colonists. The area around the Hurlbut homestead came to be known as the Judea Parish, a name preserved in the still active Judea Cemetery. It was initially part of Woodbury.
In 1746, when Edward Cogswell secured the right to mine iron ore, as part of the New Milford North Purchase, and established an ironworks along the East Aspetuck River in New Preston. 1746 also marked the purchase of land from the Wyantenock tribe by the Averill family for a homestead on Baldwin Hill, which is still occupied and farmed by direct descendants of the original inhabitants .
Washington was incorporated in 1779, with lands carved from the towns of Woodbury, Litchfield, Kent and New Milford. The town was named after George Washington, who traveled through the area several times during the American Revolution, and proverbially slept in New Preston in 1781.
Major William Cogswell, son of Edward Cogswell, was elected the town's first selectman.
Fairfield County, Connecticut
Fairfield County was the home of many Native American tribes prior to the coming of the Europeans. People of the Schaghticoke tribe lived in the area of present-day New Fairfield and Sherman. From east to west the Wappinger sachemships included the Paugussetts, Tankiteke, and the Siwanoy. There were also Paquioque and Potatuck inhabitants of Fairfield County. The Dutch explorer Adriaen Block explored coastal Connecticut in the Spring and early Summer of 1614 in the North American built vessel "Onrust". The first European settlers of the county, however, were Puritans and Congregationalists from England. Roger Ludlow (1590–1664), one of the founders of the Colony of Connecticut, helped to purchase and charter the towns of Fairfield (1639) and Norwalk (purchased 1640, chartered as a town in 1651). Ludlow is credited as having chosen the name Fairfield. Fairfield is a descriptive name referring to the beauty of its fields. The town of Stratford was settled in 1639 as well by Adam Blakeman (1596–1665). William Beardsley (1605–1661) was also one of the first settlers of Stratford in 1639.
Eliphalet Austin House
The Connecticut Land Company was formed in the late eighteenth century to settle and develop the section of western Connecticut that later became the Connecticut Western Reserve region of Ohio. Eliphalet Austin joined the company and purchased wide tracts of land throughout the region, including present-day Austinburg Township, which bears his name. He settled at present-day Austinburg in 1799 and, according to local tradition, arranged for the construction of the present house in 1811. As civilization advanced in northeastern Ohio, he became regionally prominent: his land holdings were located in multiple counties, he was responsible for carrying the mails, he operated a cattle-dealing operation, and he was a state senator from 1829 to 1831. Austin's descendents inherited his property after his death.
Pennamite–Yankee War
Both colonies purchased the same land by treaties with the Indians. Connecticut sent settlers to the area in 1754. Yankee settlers from Connecticut founded the town of Wilkes-Barre in 1769. Armed bands of Pennsylvanian Pennamites tried to expel them without success from 1769–70, starting the First Pennamite War. This was followed by the Second Pennamite War in 1775, and by the Third Pennamite War in 1784. The "wars" were not particularly bloody; in the First Pennamite war, two men from Connecticut and one man from Pennsylvania were killed in the course of two years.
History of Connecticut
The first English colonists came from the Bay Colony and Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts. Original Connecticut Colony settlements were at Windsor in 1633; at Wethersfield in 1634; and in 1636, at Hartford and Springfield, (the latter was administered by Connecticut until defecting in 1640.) The Hartford settlement was led by Reverend Thomas Hooker.
Bridgeport, Connecticut
The first documented English settlement within the present city limits of Bridgeport took place in 1644, centered at Black Rock Harbor and along North Avenue between Park and Briarwood Avenues. The place was called Pequonnock (Quiripi for "Cleared Land"), after a band of the Paugussett, an Algonquian-speaking Native American people who occupied this area. One of their sacred sites was Golden Hill, which overlooked the harbor and was the location of natural springs and their planting fields. (It has since been blasted through for construction of an expressway.) The Golden Hill Indians were granted a reservation here by the Colony of Connecticut in 1639; it lasted until 1802. (One of the tribe acquired land for a small reservation in the late 19th century that was recognized by the state. It is retained in the Town of Trumbull.)
Connecticut
The name "Connecticut" originated with the Mohegan word "quonehtacut", meaning "place of long tidal river". Connecticut's official nickname is "The Constitution State", adopted in 1959 and based on its colonial constitution of 1638–1639 which was the first in America and, arguably, the world. Connecticut is also unofficially known as "The Nutmeg State," whose origin is unknown. It may have come from its sailors returning from voyages with nutmeg, which was a very valuable spice in the 18th and 19th centuries. It may have originated in the early machined sheet tin nutmeg grinders sold by early Connecticut peddlers. It is also facetiously said to come from Yankee peddlers from Connecticut who would sell small carved nobs of wood shaped to look like nutmeg to unsuspecting customers. George Washington gave Connecticut the title of "The Provisions State" because of the material aid that the state rendered to the American Revolutionary War effort. Connecticut is also known as "The Land of Steady Habits".
John Haynes (governor)
John Haynes (May 1, 1594 – c. January 9, 1653/4), also sometimes spelled Haines, was a colonial magistrate and one of the founders of the Connecticut Colony. He served one term as governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and was the first governor of Connecticut, ultimately serving eight separate terms.