Once Upon A Time In Connecticut | Page 3

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long, six axes, six kettles, eighteen knives, one sword-blade, one pair of
shears, some toys and a musket." On this land, which is now in the city
of Hartford, the first block-house in Connecticut was built and was
called the "House of Hope." Although two small cannon were mounted
upon it the Dutch said the place should be a peaceful trading-post only
and free to all Indians who came in peace.
Very soon after this little Dutch fort of the House of Hope was finished,
Lieutenant William Holmes, from the Plymouth Colony, sailed up the
river, and he and his men carried with them on their boat a frame house
all ready to put together. The Dutch challenged the Plymouth boat as it
passed their fort, but Holmes paid no attention. He had been told by the
Governor of Plymouth to go up the river and he went, and at the mouth
of the Farmington, where Windsor is to-day, he set up the first frame
house in Connecticut and surrounded it with a palisade for protection.
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.
One of the most interesting parties of settlers who came from
Massachusetts to Hartford was "Mr. Hooker's company." Thomas
Hooker, the minister in Cambridge, led one hundred members of his
church overland to new homes in Connecticut in June, 1636. These
people had come from England a few years before, hoping to find
religious and political freedom in America, and, after a short stay in the
Massachusetts Bay Colony, they decided to remove to Connecticut.
Their journey was made in warm weather, under sunny skies, with
birds singing in the green woods. They traveled slowly, for there were
women and little children with them, old people too, and some who

were sick. Mrs. Hooker was carried all the way in a litter. They
followed a path toward the west which by that time had probably
become a well-marked trail. Part of it, no doubt, led through deep
forests. Sometimes they passed Indian villages. Sometimes they forded
streams. They drove with them a herd of one hundred and sixty cattle,
letting them graze by the way. They had wagons and tents, and at night
they camped, made fires, and milked the cows. There were berries to be
picked along the edges of the meadows and clear springs to drink from,
and the two weeks' journey must have been one long picnic to the
children.
When "Hooker's company" arrived on the banks of the Connecticut
River, three little English settlements had already been made there.
They were soon named Hartford, Windsor, and We(a)thersfield. These
three settlements were the beginning of the Connecticut Colony.
At first the people were under the government of Massachusetts
because Massachusetts thought they were still within her borders. But
before long it became necessary for them to organize a government of
their own. They had brought no patent, or charter, with them from
England, and so, finding themselves alone in the wilderness, separated
by many long miles of forests from Massachusetts Bay, they
determined to arrange their own affairs without reference to any outside
authority. They set up a government on May 1, 1637, and the next year,
under the leadership of such men as Thomas Hooker, John Haynes,
who had once been Governor of Massachusetts Bay, and Roger Ludlow,
who had had some legal training, this government, made up of deputies
from each of the three little settlements, drafted eleven "Fundamental
Orders." These "Fundamental Orders" were not a written constitution,
but a series of laws very much like those of the colonies of Plymouth
and Massachusetts Bay. There is a tradition that they were read to the
people and adopted by them in the Hartford Meetihg-House on January
14, 1639.
Connecticut continued under this form of government, which she had
decided upon for herself, for more than twenty years--until after the
civil war in England was over. Then, when royalty was restored and

Charles the Second became king, in 1660, the people feared that they
might lose something of the independence they had learned to love and
value, and they sent their governor, John Winthrop, to England to get
from the king a charter to confirm their "privileges and liberties."
Winthrop was a man who had had a university education in England
and the advantages of travel on the continent of Europe. He had a good
presence and courteous manners. Best of all, he had powerful friends at
court. There is a story that in an audience with the king