Catalog Puritan Settlers of Connecticut
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CATALOGUE OF THE NAMES OF THE EARLY PURITAN SETTLERS OF THE COLONY OF CONNECTICUT; WITH THE Time of their arrival in the Country and Colony THEIR STANDING IN SOCIETY, PLACE OF RESIDENCE, CONDITION IN LIFE, WHERE FROM, BUSINESS, &C., AS FAR AS IS FOUND ON RECORD COLLECTED FROM RECORDS, BY ROYAL R. HINMAN, OF HARTFORD. HARTFORD: PRESS OF CASE, TIFFANY AND COMPANY. 1852 _:aa l_egtonal Family_iato_G_:nt_rII Mesa, Arizona II Presented by I1 yo eI-Iima II May 2003 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1852, by Royal R. Hinman in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Connecticut. PREFACE. In giving to the public a work like the one I now offer, imperfect as publications of this kind generally must be, and depending upon all kinds of evidence, for proof of early days, such as town, court, probate and church records, often badly written two hundred years since, connected with an orthography, frequently difficult to decipher, and old books, with many obliterated margins, with family records in ancient tattered Bibles, and tombstones with many of the words and figures obliterated by time, journals to which I have referred, with dates culled from odd numbers and broken volumes, may be some excuse for the compiler for such errors as necessarily will occur in works of this kind. I have only to say to such fault-finders, serve yourselves better by collecting the genealogy and history of your own ancestors in this country. I have frequently been amused when meeting men of intelligence, who were unable to give me the name of their great-grandfather, and many could not even inform me who was their grandfather, where he resided or where he died, or the maiden name of their grandmother. Indeed I found in one case, a gentleman of liberal education, who was unable to inform the month in which he was married, or the birth of any of his six children. Too much dependence has been placed upon familY tradition, which is generally worse than no evidence. Ask most men what they know off their first ancestors in this country, and seven persons out of eight will honestly answer - - "three brothers came over to this country together," and often give their names, when in fact there are not found in the whole colony of Connecticut but four cases, where three brothers came into the colony in the early settlement, except they were children who accompanied their parents. The errors which I committed in the five numbers, I before published, were owing more to my reliance upon family tradition than all others causes. I have devoted the five past years entirely to this subject, and now feel as though I had only commenced a task of twenty years. I have examined some of the records of Long Island, of New Jersey, of Massachusetts, and very many in Connecticut, at an expense of money and time. Several of the first records in the state of New York are in the Dutch language, and in one town in New Jersey, the records have uniformly been kept in Dutch, until since A.D. 1800 -- from the latter I glean nothing. I propose to publish once in two months, a number of 100 or more pages, until six numbers have been given to the public, at fifty cents a number, which will contain nearly three thousand of the early settlers of the Colony, and most of them the first of the name who come to Connecticut, with some genealogy and character of each, where I have been enabled to procure them. The names will be arranged and printed in alphabetical order, so as to be referred to in the volume with perfect ease. Where so many facts are collected, it will be impossible to give the authority for each, as the printed references would occupy too much space in the book. Hartford, Ct., 1852 INTRODUCTION AND HISTORICAL FACTS. It is calculated that about one-half of the present population (exclusive of foreigners who have come to New England, since 1800,) are the descendants of the Puritan settlers of the four first Colonies in New England. A large portion of the present population, within the old bounds of the Colony of Connecticut, have some curiosity to learn, who their first ancestors were in this country; where and when they landed, what was their condition to live in the wilderness, surrounded by savage men, more dangerous to their future welfare than the beasts of the forest. The object of the compiler, is to issue six numbers, revising the five numbers before published, depending as little as possible, upon tradition, but upon the Town, Church, Probate, Colony and Court Records, in different towns in the Colony, and giving to the public the names of the first settlers who located in the Connecticut Colony; the ships they came in, where landed, their standing and condition in life, as far as discovered. Most off the settlers of New England, previous to 1700, came first into the Plymouth or Massachusetts colonies, and those who afterwards settled in Connecticut, removed from those two colonies. Many of the first settlers of Connecticut remained several years at Watertown, Newtown and Dorchester, in Massachusetts, before they removed to Connecticut. And it is yet quite difficult, from all the records discovered, to settle the point satisfactorily, what town was first settled by the white people in this colony. I am inclined to believe there is little question, that the first Dutch people were at Hartford, before and English settlers were at either Windsor or Wethersfield. Both the English and Dutch claimed to have been the first Discovers of Connecticut River, and both purchased lands on the on the river. Mr. Winslow probably had information of the river before the Dutch, yet it appears from history that the Dutch had erected a fort at Dutch Point, in Hartford, probably with the intention of holding the lands on the river, and as a trading - house. The best evidence is that this was as early as 1633. Gov. Winslow and Mr Bradford visited Gov. Winthrop to induce him to join with the Plymouth Colony in a trade with the Indians in Connecticut, in 1633, and erect a house for this purpose. Gov. Winthrop declined the offer of uniting, and gave his reasons for so doing. The Plymouth people, Dr. Trumbull says, "determined to undertake the enterprise at their own risk." In 1633, "John Oldham and three others with him," travelled through the woods to Connecticut, to view the country and trade with the indians. It Appears by Dr. Trumbull's account of it that the Dutch were located at Hartford when Capt. William Holmes of Plymouth, with his vessel and company, with a frame and materials for a house went up the river. The Dutchmen stood by their cannon and ordered Holmes to strike his colors, or they would fire on him: Holmes assured the Dutch he had a commission from the ii governor of Plymouth to go up the fiver and he must (and did) obey his orders. And the house was erected in Windsor, in October, 1633, and fortified against the Dutch and Indians by palisadoes. These facts show that the first white men, located settlers on the Connecticut were Dutch at Dutch Point, in Hartford, as early as October, 1633, and were there when Capt. Holmes went up the fiver with his company, to erect a trading-house at Windsor. Windsor appears to have been the first town settled by the English and Wethersfield was probably the next, but is by no means certain that the English were not in Hartford, nearly at the same time they were at Windsor and Wethersfield. We find Nicholas Clark the joiner, sent to Hartford by John Tallcot, Sen., to build him a framed house in Hartford, in 1635, a year previous to Mr. Hooker and his company removing to Hartford. (see note A in Appendix.) Nicholas Clark is found at Hartford one of the first settlers, and a son of John Talcot, Sen., wrote these facts in his manuscript copy of the first history of hartford, which is now, and ever since has been, in possession of his descendants. Nicholas Clark in the summer of 1635, built the kitchen part of the house, and in 1636, the uptight part adjoining the kitchen, &c. Thus he could not, or at any rate, would not have attempted to do alone or with a few men, if surrounded by savages and wild beasts. I am inclined to believe that these three town had many inhabitants in each of them, as early as 1635.* The first Court Record now preserved, was held at Newtown, (Hartford,) April 26, 1636'. this was about two months before Mr. Hooker and his company of Hartford settlers started upon their journey for Hartford. Yet we find the five Judges were chosen from the three new towns, Dorchester, Newtown, and Watertown, and appointed a constable for each of the three town: not only so, if there had been no white English population before 1636 in Hartford, Mr. Hooker would not have brought his delicate wife on a litter, upon men's shoulders from Massachusetts to Connecticut, when he had no house provided for her, on their arrival. * Dr. Trumbull, under date 1636 remarks, "as soon as the spring advanced, and the traveling would admit, the hardy men began to return from Massachusetts, to their habitations on the river." Vol. 1 page 64. It may be inferred from this remark that many settlers in the three towns on Connecticut River, had been the year previous, and built houses, and had returned to their families in the autumn of 1635, and returned to Connecticut in the spring of 1636.