Today in 1637, a month after a combined Pequot and Wangunk attack on the small colonial settlment of Wethersfield left nine dead and crippled the town’s food security, a group of 77 English soldiers and hundreds of their Mohegan and Narragansett allies retaliated by attacking and burning a Pequot village at Mystic Fort, near…
Tag: colonization and settlement
May 1: The Deadly Pequot War Begins
Today in 1637, Connecticut colonists formally declared war against the Pequots, the Native American tribe whose territory covered some 250 square miles in southeastern Connecticut and Rhode Island. Relations between the colonists and the Pequots had been tense ever since the English arrived in the Connecticut River valley in 1633. Both the Pequots and…
April 23: Surprise Pequot and Wangunk Attack on Wethersfield – Nine Dead; Two Girls Captured
For the English colonists who settled along the banks of the Connecticut River in the 1630s, life in the “New World” was anything but easy. In addition to the challenges to food security caused by the unrelentingly harsh winters of the so-called Little Ice Age, the colonists’ relations with other colonies, as well as…
November 26: The Oldest Congregational Church in America
As the oldest continuously active Congregational church in the United States, the First Congregational Church of Windsor, Connecticut has celebrated more anniversaries than nearly any other church in the country. One of the most memorable anniversaries in the congregation’s existence was its 275th anniversary, celebrated on November 26, 1905. That year, the church organized…
November 16: Finally, A Connecticut Governor Born in Connecticut
The first thirteen chief executives of colonial Connecticut (including the governors of Saybrook and New Haven colonies, which merged with Connecticut by 1665) were all born in England. It was not until the second decade of the eighteenth century that Connecticut’s governor was a person actually born and raised in the Land of Steady…
November 4: Connecticut Founder & Alchemist John Winthrop Jr. Arrives in America
Today in 1631, John Winthrop, Jr., one of the most important figures in Connecticut history, first set foot in the New World, having arrived in Boston where his father, John Winthrop Sr., was governor the Massachusetts Bay Colony. A Renaissance man of many talents, the younger Winthrop was well-versed in alchemy, medicine, and early…
November 3: 47 Years & 700 Pages Later, Joshua Hempstead Makes His Final Diary Entry.
Born in New London in 1678, Joshua Hempstead lived a rather unremarkable life for a colonial freeman. He was one of nine children, and being the only son, he inherited his father’s house. After marrying in his early 20s, Joshua and his wife had nine children before she passed away in 1716. He never…
October 31: Trick or Treat? The Legend of the Charter Oak
One of the most important symbols in Connecticut history is the Charter Oak – the giant, gnarled oak tree that represents Connecticut’s “steady habit” of self-rule and resistance against tyranny. Depictions and namesakes of the Charter Oak are plentiful throughout the state: schools, streets, social organizations, parks, Connecticut’s state quarter, and even a brewery…
October 21: When Columbus Stood For Inclusion & Columbus Day Came 9 Days Late
At a time when immigrants – many from Italy – were pouring into America in numbers that seriously alarmed the “old stock” descendants of the original Puritan settlers, the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s even-then-disputed “discovery” of America proved an ideal time for Connecticans to assess the contributions of newcomers while expressing a common patriotism….
October 20: A Monument to the State’s Founding Minister
On October 20, 1950, a crowd of several hundred Connecticans gathered in front of the Old State House in Hartford to observe the unveiling of a new, eight-foot-tall statue of Thomas Hooker, the Puritan minister and “founding father” of Connecticut who founded the settlement of Hartford in 1636. Born in England in 1586, Thomas…
September 26: Connecticut’s First English Settlement
Today in 1633, a small band of English settlers from Eastern Massachusetts sailed past an openly hostile Dutch trading fort near modern-day Hartford and defiantly staked their own claim near the shores of the Connecticut River. There, at a site that would soon be known as Windsor, they built a trading post surrounded by…
September 21: A Punishing Treaty Ends the Pequot War
Today in 1638, an “agreement between the English in Connecticutt and the Indian Sachems” of the Narragansett and Mohegan tribes was signed in Hartford, marking the end, at least as far as Connecticut was concerned, of the Pequot War. That war was the first major Anglo-Indian conflict in the region that became New England….