Chapter 5

Chapter 5
Connecticut
First Settlement: Huys de Goede Hoop/House of Good Hope, 1623
Capital: Hartford and New Haven
Economy: Agriculture, fishing, shipping, trade.
Native Tribes: Lenape, Mohegan, Pequot
1775 Governor: Jonathan Trumbull

History
1614: Dutch fur trader Adriaen Block explores the Connecticut River.
1623: The Dutch build a fort at Huys de Goede Hoop (House of Good Hope) near
present-day Hartford.
1633: Settlers from the Plymouth Colony establish Windsor, a few miles north of
the Dutch trading post.
1634-1638: Pequot War. Fort Saybrook is effectively besieged throughout the winter
of 1636-1637. In the spring, Pequot raids on other settlements increase. Windsor,
Hartford, and Wethersfield set up a collective government to fight the Pequots.
1635: The Saybrook Colony is established by settlers from Massachusetts.
1636: English settlers on the Delaware break with Massachusetts and establish the
Connecticut colony. Its independence is not recognized by the Crown until 1688.
1637: The Mystic Massacre. English settlers set fire to a Pequot fort on the Mystic
River, killing anyone who attempts to escape. An estimated 400-700 Pequots die,
mostly women and children. The Pequots are broken and seek shelter among neigh-
boring tribes.
1638: The New Haven Colony is founded by Puritans from England.
1643: Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, New Haven, and Connecticut colonies form
the New England Confederation with the goal of uniting Puritan colonists against
native attacks and against New England’s colonial rivals, such as New Netherland to
the south and Quebec to the north.

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1644: The Saybrook Colony merges with the Hartford-based Connecticut Colony.
1654: The Dutch withdraw from Connecticut.
1662: Connecticut receives a Royal Charter confirming its right to self-govern-
ment.
1664: New Netherland is captured by England, and some of its eastern territories are
split off to create New Jersey, western Connecticut, and Delaware.
1665: The New Haven Colony merges with the Connecticut Colony.
1675-6: King Philip’s War. More than half of New England’s 90 towns are attacked
by the Wampanoag Confederacy.
1686-1689: The Dominion of New England includes Connecticut. Royal Governor
Sir Edmund Andros maintains that his commission supersedes Connecticut’s 1662
Charter. In late October, 1687, Andros arrives with troops and naval support and
demands the assembly turn the 1662 charter over to him. As the charter is placed
on the table, those present blow all the candles out. When the light is restored, the
charter is missing. According to legend, it was hidden in the Charter Oak.
1688: The Connecticut colony receives a royal charter, formally separating it from
Massachusetts.
1701: The Collegiate School of Connecticut is chartered in Old Saybrook. New
Haven is made co-capital of Connecticut.
1715: The Collegiate School of Connecticut moves to New Haven.
1718: The Collegiate School of Connecticut is renamed after benefactor Elihu
Yale.
1722: Jailbreak riot in Hartford.
1734: Riot against ship seizure in Hartford
County.
1765: Stamp Act riots in Boston, Rhode Island,
Connecticut, New York, and Maryland.
1766: Anti-customs riots in New Haven.
1766: Riot in New London against the Rog-
erenes, a Quaker-influenced religious move-
ment.
1769: Anti-customs riots in New Haven and
New London.
1769 – 1771: First Pennamite War between settlers from Connecticut and Pennsyl-
vania in the Wyoming Valley of Pennsylvania.

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1775: Anti-Loyalist riot at East Haddam. On April 23, the Second Company, Gov-
ernor’s Foot Guard, under Captain Benedict Arnold, break into the New Haven
powder house to arm themselves and begin a three-day march to Cambridge, Mas-
sachusetts.

Geography
Connecticut is cut in two by the Connecticut River, and the Long Island Sound
forms its southern border. Most settlements are along the coast or in the river valley,
which has good alluvial soil. The land on either side is mostly forested hills. North-
ern Connecticut is on the fringe of the Taconic Mountains, part of the Appalachian
mountain chain. The highest point in Connecticut is Bear Mountain (2,379 feet) in
the northwest corner of the colony.

Society and Politics

Connecticut has long been used to governing itself, thanks to its charter. The
Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, ratified in 1639, invests the people with the au-
thority to govern.
With many colonists from Massachusetts, Connecticut has always leaned to-
ward Puritanism, but tolerates Anglicans, Baptists, and other “sober dissenters.”
However, tensions are growing over the Loyalist tendencies of Connecticut Angli-
cans, who are mainly concentrated in Fairfield County.

Locations
Hartford
Hartford stands on the Connecticut River. It was founded as a mainly farming
community, but has grown into a commercial and administrative center. The lead-
ing founder, Thomas Hooker, was a Cambridge-educated Puritan who maintained
that “The foundation of authority is laid, firstly, in the free consent of the people.” This
philosophy is a direct challenge to the concept of the Divine Right of Kings, which
underpins the British monarchy. The Connecticut Colony, based at Hartford, had
one of the world’s first written constitutions and went on to absorb the Saybrook and
New Haven Colonies, facts of which the people of Hertford are still proud.
The town square—marked with a monuments at each corner—contains the Meeting
House, House of Correction, stocks, and a pillory. It is the center of the community,
both for punishment and celebration. Hartford also boasts a public library, founded
in 1774 under the name of The Librarian Company, and the residents are only too
happy to point out the Charter Oak and tell its story to visitors.

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New Haven
Located on a broad inlet New Haven is a working port, but has been eclipsed
by the rise of Boston and New York. New haven was laid out over a century ago ac-
cording to a nine-square grid plan which can still be seen at the center of the town.
Founded by Puritans, New Haven was a much stricter community than Hartford
to the north, but after the two colonies were merged, some members of the New
Haven Colony left to found Newark in New Jersey. New Haven is bracing itself for
war since the militia emptied the powder house and set off for Cambridge.

Yale College
Founded in 1701 as a Collegiate School for the training of Congregational
(Puritan) ministers, the college moved to New Haven in 1716 and was renamed in
1718 after receiving a substantial gift from Elihu Yale. Yale College (as it is known
in 1775) focuses on the study of theology and Biblical languages. It is home to two
literary and debating societies, Brothers in Unity and the Linonian Society. An ear-
lier society, Crotonia, is little known and ceased to exist before 1766. All freshmen
join one society or the other, and each maintains its own library.
Ostensibly founded to expose students to contemporary writing and allow them
to sharpen their debating skills, society members may delve into secrets that Yale’s
faculty would sooner they avoided. Who knows what might be found in their private
libraries? Students might also investigate what happened to the Crotonia Society,
whose name recalls the key word of the Roanoke mystery: “Croatoan.”

The Turtle
David Bushnell of Saybrook, a student at Yale in 1775, has a revolutionary de-
sign for a submarine, which can approach a ship (say, a blockading British warship)

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unseen and attach a 130-pound keg of gunpowder to its hull, detonated by a time
fuse. Bushnell is a good patriot, but either side would pay well for his designs, which
include barrages of floating mines.

Mysteries
Charles Island
Also known as Thrice-Cursed Island, Charles Island is just off the coast of Mil-
ford. It was sacred to the Paugussett, who cursed the island after they lost it to set-
tlers. Captain Kidd is said to have buried a treasure there, and cursed anyone who
looked for it—as did other unnamed 18th-century sailors. The island is said to be
haunted.

The Sleeping Giant

This hill near Hamden is said by the Quinnipac to be the body of a troublesome
giant named Hobbomock, cast into an eternal sleep by Keihtan the creator god. Na-
tive Americans or apocalyptic cultists could cause enormous destruction by waking
him.

The Moodus Noises

Since pre-colonial times, the area around Moodus, near Hartford, has been not-
ed for the strange rumbling and crashing noises that fill the air. Native Americans
and Puritans both attribute the noises to a demonic origin.

Gungywamp
Just across the river from New London, this prehistoric stone complex includes
stone circles, standing stones, multiple stone chambers with astronomical align-
ments, and a bluff called “The Cliff of Tears” which causes inexplicable bouts of
sadness and depression in those who stand near it. The site is at least 2,000 years old
and may have been a temple.

Dudleytown
Dudleytown was founded in 1740 in the far north-west of Connecticut. It is
still inhabited in 1776, but the effects of its curse—which came with the Dudley
family from England—are evident in the large number of abandoned houses and
the generally grim atmosphere. Demonic manifestations sometimes occur, usually
linked to some member of the Dudley family.

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