Emigration icut. Oct. 15. 2 the summer, a party from Dorchester found their way to the neighborhood of the spot where the Plymouth to Connect factory had been planted,' and a few explorers from Watertown established themselves where Wethersfield at length grew up. Probably these expeditions were preparatory to a more important one which took place in the autumn, when a party of sixty persons, including women and children, driving cattle before them, set off for the infant settlements.3 The unexpected length of their difficult journey abridged their time for making preparations for the winter, which came on unusually soon, and proved to be of distressing severity. In six weeks from the time of their departNov. 26. ure, twelve of their number had struggled back to Boston. They reported that they had left the river already frozen over, excluding all supplies by water carriage, and that " they had been ten days upon their journey, and had lost one of their company, drowned in the ice by the way, and had been all starved, but that, by God's providence, they lighted upon an Indian wigwam."4 Oct. 6. ་ When John Winthrop the younger came to New England the second time, he bore a commission from Lord Say and Sele, Lord Brooke, and others their associates, patentees of Connecticut. It constituted him Governor of that territory for a year, with instructions to build a fort at the river's mouth, for which pur Warwick, President of the Council for New England. Lord Warwick's assignment to the new proprietors, with a description of the boundaries, &c., under the date of March 19, 1632, may be found in Hazard (I. 318), as well as in other places. - Winthrop's commission, signed by Sir Arthur Hazelrigg, George Fenwick, who subsequently came over, and three others, as a committee of the patentees, is in the Appendix (No. II.) to the first volume of Trumbull's History. Foundation pose he came provided with men and ammunition, and with two thousand pounds in money. He was further directed to employ a party of fifty to erect the fort, and to put up houses, "first for their own present ac- of Saybrook. commodations, and then such houses as may receive men of quality," the latter to be within the circuit of the fort; and he was to take care that all settlers for the present should "plant themselves either at the harbor, or near the mouth of the river," for the purpose of more effective mutual defence. He forthwith despatched a party of twenty men, who, with two pieces of cannon which they had mounted, drove off a vessel sent from New Netherland to assert the Dutch claim to the possession of the river. Something was done towards the maintenance of the English right when a small work was first erected and then commanded by Lion Gardiner, an engineer whom Winthrop had brought over for the purpose.1 Nov. 3. Vane and Peter were associated with Winthrop, by the patentees of Connecticut, in the agency for the management of their estate. The three made proclamation of the rights of their principals, and required a recognition of them on the part of the emigrants to that region. The matter was adjusted by an agreement of the emigrants, either to withdraw entirely on being remunerated for their expenses, or to give up such portion of the ground they Winthrop the younger, though it is barely possible that the Governor is indicated. Winthrop the younger is spoken of in the body of the paper; but what seems to me more than countervailing evidence that he, not his father, was the signer, is the language in which the Connecticut people are challenged to declare "under what right and pretence they have lately taken up their plantations"; a challenge which Winthrop the elder, after his agency in the transaction, could scarcely have made. Comp. Winthrop, I. 170. had occupied as should be satisfactory to the patentees. But further reflection must have shown that their presence was no disadvantage, but a benefit; and they were exposed to no further molestation from the proprietors. The dispute with Plymouth Colony, arising out of the occupation, by the emigrants from Dorchester, of lands which the former had purchased of the Indians and defended against the Dutch,1 lasted longer; but was at length amicably composed, on the payment, by the Dorchester people, of fifty pounds, with a surrender of forty acres of intervale, and a large tract of upland. The pain occasioned by the recent quarrel at the eastward had its influence in peaceably determining this dispute. "To make any forcible resistance was far from their thoughts; they had had enough of that about Kennebec." 3 Sufferings of the first settlers of Those of the adventurers who persevered in attempting to winter on Connecticut River underwent extreme hardship. The vessels in which they had Connecticut. laden great part of their household supplies and furniture were detained by the freezing over of the river. The ground was covered deep with snow, and the cattle suffered for want of shelter and provender. Impelled by the fear of famine, seventy persons struggled Dec. 3. down to the river's mouth, in fruitless search of the expected ships. They fell in with another vessel, which took them back to Boston. Acorns, with some malt and grain, added to the precarious products of the chase, furnished scanty means of subsistence to those who stayed behind. The loss of the Dorchester settlement alone, in cattle that died, was estimated at two thousand pounds sterling.* 1 Bradford felt very sore about this transaction. (History, 338–342.) The reason, or pretence, of the persistence of the Dorchester people was, that they were, or might be, within the limits of the Massachusetts patent, which those of Plymouth had had no right to invade. Winslow conducted the treaty. (Winthrop, I. 181.) 2 Trumbull, I. 66, on the authority of manuscripts of Governor Wolcott. Comp. Bradford, 342. 3 Bradford, 341. See above, p. 338. 4 Winthrop, I. 175, 184. 2 1635. Oct. 3. 1636. June. Renewed emigration icut. At length came the movement which gave permanent vitality to Connecticut. Among the numerous colonists who had recently arrived was a company attached to Thomas Shepard, formerly of Emmanuel College, and more recently a lecturer at Earl's Cone, in Essex. Shepard and his friends arranged with the members of the Newtown church for the purchase of their houses and other immovable property. The plan of removal being thus facilitated, Hooker and Stone, with the members of their congregation, a hundred in number, of both sexes and all ages, took advantage of the pleasantest of the New England months to make their emigration. They directed their march by the compass, aided by such local in- to Connectformation as they had derived from previous explorers. Their herd of a hundred and sixty cattle, which grazed as they journeyed, supplied them with milk. They hewed their difficult way through thickets, and their simple engineering bridged with felled trees the streams which could not be forded. Tents and wagons protected them from the rain, and sheltered their sleep. Early berries, which grew along the way, furnished an agreeable variety in their diet; and the fragrance of summer flowers, and the songs of innumerable birds, beguiled the weariness of their pilgrimage. It occupied a fortnight, though the distance was scarcely a hundred miles. Mrs. Hooker, by reason of illness, was conveyed in a horse litter. At a spot, on the right bank of the Connecticut, just north of the Dutch stockade, the caravan reached its journey's end. The little settlements above and below were enlarged in the course of the summer by the emigration of the churches of Dorchester and Watertown. 1 In the year 1635, twenty vessels brought three thousand colonists to Massachusetts, including eleven ministers. 2 Shepard, Memoir of his own Life, in Young's Chronicles of Massachusetts, p. 514. 3 See above, p. 340. The former was accompanied by Mr. Warham, February. Mr. Maverick having lately died. The latter engaged a new pastor, Mr. Henry Smith, instead of Mr. Phillips, who, from dissatisfaction on his own part or on theirs, remained behind. To the spots selected for their habitation the emigrants gave, for the present, the names of the Massachusetts towns which respectively they had left. Pynchon and seven other persons from Roxbury had pitched upon a beautiful site higher up the river, afterwards called Springfield.1 The political constitution of the four plantations was the singular one of a "Commission granted" by the General Court of MasMarch. sachusetts to Ludlow, Pynchon, and six others, "to govern the people of Connecticut for the space of a year now next coming." The Massachusetts Magistrates knew that at least the lower towns on the Connecticut were beyond their border. But their course seemed to them to be justified by "a necessity that some present government might be observed"; and something of the English doctrine of an indefeasible allegiance adhering to their friends in their new abode may have been floating in their minds. Government Local business had been transacted at town meetings3 from the beginning of the plantations. The general administration for the first year. continued entirely for the first in the hands of the Commissioners. It was directed, for the most part, to the establishment of police and military regulations, the collection of a revenue (for which purpose a Treasurer was chosen), and arrange year. 1 "They entered into a covenant with each other, [1636,] May 14." The Reverend George Moxon, their first minister, was with them as early as the following year. (Breck, Century Sermon at Springfield, 15, 16.) 2 The preamble, however, declares that this was done in concert with "John Winthrop, Jr., Esq., Governor, appointed by certain noble personages and men of quality interested in the said river, which are yet in England.” (Mass. Col. Rec., I. 170.) 3 "One, the earliest, bearing date 1635." (Hartford in the Olden Time, 50.) |