Waterbury, Connecticut

“ Such numbers were constantly emigrating to New England, in consequence of the persecution of the Puritans, that the people of Dorchester, Watertown, and Newtown, began to be much straitened by the accession of new planters.
By those who had been in Connecticut they had received intelligence of the excellent meadows on the river; they therefore determined to remove, and once more brave the dangers and hardships of making settlements in a dreary wilderness. ”

“ Mrs. Hooker was borne through the wilderness upon a litter. The people generally carried their packs, arms, and utensils. They were nearly a fortnight on their journey.
[8] While the planters of Connecticut were thus exerting themselves in prosecuting and regulating the affairs of that colony, another was projected and settled at Quinnipiack, and afterward called New Haven. On the 26th of July, 1637, Mr. John Davenport, Mr. Samuel Eaton, Theophilus Eaton, and Edward Hopkins, Esquires, Mr. Thomas Gregson, and many others of good character and fortune, arrived in Boston. ”

“ All this, however, need not dash our satisfaction at the advantages which Connecticut enjoyed, and the good they did her. The climate and physical nature of the country required an active and wholesome life in the inhabitants, while yet the conditions were not so severe as to discourage them. They were of a rustic, hardy, industrious temper, of virtuous and godly life, and animated by the consciousness of being well treated. They lived and labored on their farms, and there were not so many of them that the farms crowded upon one another, though the population increased rapidly. ”

“ John Davenport, after witnessing the Antinomian controversy, declined the pressing hospitality of Massachusetts, and led his New Haven company far enough afield to avoid theological entanglements or disputed points of church polity. Unimpeded, they would make their intended experiment in statecraft and build their strictly scriptural republic. Still earlier Thomas Hooker, Samuel Stone, and John Warham led the Connecticut colonists into the wilderness because they foresaw contention, strife, and evil days before them if they were to be forced to conform to the strict policy of Massachusetts. ”

“ They were visible in his changed countenance, when he spoke of their misfortunes. You have justly admired, Madam, the firmness of André; yet there is a circumstance respecting one of our own Connecticut men, which, though less applauded, is worthy of equal honour. When the retreat of Washington left the British in possession of Long-Island, it became exceedingly important to know their plan of operations. ”

“ Thus has Connecticut, by contention and folly, impoverished and kept in obscurity the most fruitful colony in America, to support the fame and grandeur of Boston and New-York among the trading nations of Europe. When I view the less fertile soil of Boston, the conscience of merchants, the pride of the pretended Gospel ministers, the blindness of bigotry, and the mercantile ignorance of farmers, I forgive Boston, New-York, and Rhode-Island, but condemn Connecticut. ”

“ The tombs of the first settlers are held sacred, and travellers seldom pass them without the compliment of a sigh or tear. On one mossy stone is written,
“Here pride is calm’d, and death is life.”
In 1709, this town was honoured by a convention of contending independent divines, who were pleased with no constitution in church or state.—This multitude of sectarians, after long debates, published a book, called The Saybrook Platform, containing the doctrines and rules of the churches in Connecticut. ”

“ Connecticut showed her respect and affection for Winthrop, by annually electing him for fourteen consecutive years as her governor.
The result of this ample charter, this liberty of self-government, was a social condition so nearly approaching to the Utopia of philosophers, and the golden age of the poets, that we must be allowed to dwell somewhat at length upon the beautiful and refreshing picture. It stands almost alone in the history of man. ”

“ It should be added, that every town in the colony is by law obliged to support a grammar school, and every parish an English school. From experience, therefore, I judge that superstition with knowledge and sincerity is more favourable to religion than superstition with ignorance and insincerity; and that it was for this reason the Church thrives in Connecticut, and exists only in New-England provinces. In further support of my opinion, I shall recite the words of Mr. George Whitefield, in his first tour through America in 1740. ”

“ Then we have a day’s drive, perhaps, of unsurpassed beauty, which no wire fence can enclose, as along the Connecticut River valley on the Vermont side with an unbroken view of New Hampshire hills, Moosilauke in full view, and the tip of Lafayette in the distance, the silvery, leisurely Connecticut dividing the two states and the green and yellow fields in the foreground completing the picture. No State Reservation or Park System can compete with it. ”

“ In the following year Lord Saye and Sele, Lord Brooke, Lord Rich, Richard Saltonstall, and eight other leading men of the puritan party, having obtained a large tract of land by a patent from Lord Warwick and the New England Company, dated 19 March 1631–2, established a settlement on the river Connecticut, and appointed Winthrop governor. But the projected settlement was little more than a factory protected by a fort, and when emigrants from Massachusetts founded the colony of Connecticut the earlier settlement was absorbed in it. ”

“ Davenport withdrew to Boston, where he became a participant in the religious life of that colony; and the strict Puritans of Branford, Guilford, and Milford, led by Abraham Pierson, went to New Jersey and founded Newark. The towns, left loose and at large, joined Connecticut voluntarily and separately, and the New Haven colony ceased to exist. But the dual capital of Connecticut and the alternate meetings of its legislature in Hartford and New Haven, marked for more than two hundred years the twofold origin of the colony and the state. ”

“ If his writings, in which he described these places, are to be taken literally, he even embarked for Detroit; but information in respect to the whole Niagara excursion is of the scantiest. All that is known is that in some way, during his long stay at Salem in these years, he made himself acquainted with portions of Connecticut, Vermont, New York, and New Hampshire, to add to his knowledge of Massachusetts and Maine ”

“ The colony also extended their claim to the Narragansett country, and appointed officers for the government of the inhabitants of Wickford.
Notwithstanding the remonstrance of the court at New Haven, their appeal to King Charles II., and the engagements of Governor Winthrop, Connecticut pursued the affair of a union in the same manner in which it was begun. At a session of the General Assembly, August 19, 1663, a committee was again appointed to treat with their friends at New Haven, Milford, Guilford, and Branford, relative to their incorporation with Connecticut. ”

“ George Whitefield, in one of his sermons, gave them the following character: “I have found,” said he, “the people of Connecticut the wisest of any upon the continent; they are the best friends and the worst enemies; they are hair-brained bigots on all sides, and they may be compared to the horse and mule, without bit and bridle. ”

“ The Dutch settlers on New-York Island, Hudson’s [Pg 100] river, and the west end of Long Island, being subdued by Colonel Nichols in September, 1664, the royal Commissioners, after hearing the Deputies from Connecticut in support of the charter granted to that province against the Duke of York’s patent, ordered, in December following, that Long-Island should be annexed to the government of New-York, and that the West boundary of Connecticut should be a line drawn from the mouth of Mamaroneck river north-north-west to the line of the Massachusets. ”

“ Mr. J. Beebe is a member of the Baptist Church. Mr. Otis is a member of the Congregational Church. Mr. Morgan is a Justice of the Peace, and Messrs. Perkins and Rogers are designated by their titles. All those gentlemen are citizens of Waterford, Connecticut.
To whom it may concern. This may certify that Mr. Nehemiah Caulkins, of Waterford, in New London County, is a near neighbor to the subscriber, and has been for many years. I do consider him a man of unquestionable veracity and certify that he is so considered by people to whom he is personally known. ”

“ Other Englishmen from Massachusetts Bay, hearing of these new fertile lands and of friendly Indians and a profitable fur trade, came overland, making their way through the wilderness. By and by their numbers were so great that the Dutch were crowded out and driven away and Connecticut was settled by the English. ”

“ Governor Wolcott says, “was the first house erected in Connecticut.” The Dutch about the same time erected a trading-house at Hartford, which they called the “Hirse of Good Hope.”
It was with great difficulty that Holmes and his company erected and fortified their house, and kept it afterward. The Indians were offended at their bringing home the original proprietors and lords of the country, and the Dutch that they had settled there, and were about to rival them in trade and in possession of these excellent lands upon the river. ”

“ That the "Columbiad" went far to justify those criticisms was true; but on the other hand it proved something almost equivalent to genius. Dwight, Trumbull, and Barlow, whatever might be their differences, united in offering proof of the bound­less ambition which marked the American character. Their aspirations were immense, and sooner or later such restless craving was sure to find better expres­sion. Meanwhile Connecticut was a province by it­self, a part of New England rather than of the United States. ”

“ The colony was in a measure isolated, not only from England and English control, but also from the large colonial centers such as Boston and New York, through which it communicated with the older civilization. Connections with other colonies were neither frequent nor important. Roads were poor, ferries dangerous, bridges few, and transportation even from town to town was difficult and slow.
The importance of Connecticut lay in the men that it nurtured and the forms of government that it established and preserved. Few institutions from the Old World had root in its soil. ”

“ The traveller approaching by the Connecticut Valley holds this exquisite landscape in view from the Vermont side of the river. The tourist who approaches by the valley of the Merrimac enjoys it from the New Hampshire shore.
The large village of Newbury, usually known as the “Street,” is built along a plateau, rising well above the intervale, and joined to the foothills of the Green Mountains. The Passumpsic Railway coasts the intervale, just touching the northern skirt of the village. The village of Haverhill is similarly situated with respect to the skirt of the White Mountains ”

“ American history. The agricultural life, which was more productive in the valley of the Connecticut than elsewhere, determined largely the social life of the colony, made Connecticut the most serenely democratic of the New England States, emphasized the individual worth, and allowed free play in self-government. ”

“ The American people believed in their authenticity, which belief was confirmed during the war by the distinct favor shown for a while to Massachusetts, and by the hope, openly entertained by England, of separating New England from New York and the southern states.
[l] Manufactures in Connecticut (abridged from the U. S. marshal's report in the autumn of 1810, cited in Niles' Register, vi, 323-333) were represented by 14 cotton mills, 15 woolen mills. (By 1815 New London county alone had 14 woolen mills and 10 cotton.) ”

“ While the colonists were thus prosecuting the business of settlement in New England, the Right Honorable James, Marquis of Hamilton, obtained a grant from the Council of Plymouth April 20, 1635, of all that tract of country which lies between Connecticut River and Narraganset River and harbor, from the mouth of each of said rivers northward sixty miles into the country. ”

“ Sampson Occom, by the Charity of England, have joined in the same work.—To the General Assembly, and the Consociation of Connecticut, Dr. Wheelock and his associates are much beholden for their success in converting the poor benighted savages in the howling wilderness. ”

“ Let such remember, that when the Ethiopian shall change his skin, when the Leopard shall change his spots, and when bitter fountains shall send forth sweet water, then will those who flatter the people with their tongues, and deceive them with their lips seek their happiness. Such are some of the measures resorted to by those who have sworn in their wrath that Connecticut shall be revolutionized. Finding all these ineffectual, and that the good sence and virtue of Connecticut has hitherto opposed an inseparable barrier to all their plans, they now exclaim Connecticut has no Constitution. ”

“ The Connecticut is seen sweeping onward like a king, through its fair domain, amid the spires of numerous towns and villages, while, by the aid of a glass, the sails of the vessels in the port of Hartford, and the movements in the streets, are distinctly visible.
The prospect from the South Rock, in the vicinity of the farm-house, though of less extent, is one of extreme beauty, and presents, as in a vivid, glowing picture, the grouping of the objects more immediately beneath you,—lake, copse, villa, cultivated lawn, and crowning tower. ”