The Connecticut Colony was an English colony that became the U.S. state of Connecticut. Originally known as the River Colony, the colony was organized on March 3, 1636 as a haven for Puritan noblemen. After early struggles with the Dutch,the English gained control of the colony permanently by the late 1630s. The colony was later the scene of a bloody war between the English and Native Americans, known as the Pequot War. It played a significant role in the establishment of self-government in the New World with its legendary refusal to surrender local authority to the Dominion of New England, an event known as the Charter Oak incident.
Two other English colonies in the present area of the State of Connecticut merged into the Connecticut Colony: Saybrook Colony in 1644; New Haven Colony in 1662.
Leaders
governor Roger Wolcott. Pitkin died in office in 1831, and was replaced by Deputy Governor Jonathan Trumbull, a merchant from Lebanon. Trumbull, also a supporter of the Sons of Liberty, continued to be elected governor throughout the Revolutionary War and retired as governor in 1784, the year after the signing of the Treaty of Paris of 1783, which granted the United States its independence from Great Britain.
Reasons for founding
Thomas Hooker led settlers to the Connecticut valley to help satisfy New England's increasing demand for farm land. He may have also left because of a squabble he got into with John Cotton. Although the two ministers argued over whether or not one could prepare for salvation, the argument may have actually been personal in nature. Hooker had been a prominent minister back in England, but, in Cambridge, he found his prominence was being overshadowed by Cotton. By withdrawing from the Bay Colony and moving west to the Connecticut River, Hooker was diffusing the conflict. Vorlage:Sectstub
Role of religion
Like Massachusetts Bay Colony, Connecticut was founded by Puritans who made the Congregational Church the established church in the colony. Tax dollars supported the local ministers, and colonists who failed to attend Sunday services were subject to fines. Until 1708, the Congregational Church was the only legal religion in Connecticut. That year, however, the colony recognized "sober dissent," and excused certain dissenters, notably Anglicans and Baptists, from paying taxes to support the state church, provided, of course, that they contributed to their own lawful dissenting church. Also in 1708, the colony adopted the Saybrook Platform, which took church sovereignty away from the local congregations and placed it in the hands of a colony-wide consociation controlled by ministers.
In 1701, the General Assembly authorized the formation of the Collegiate School, with the mission of training new Congregational ministers in the colony. After locating in Killingworth, Saybrook, and Wethersfield, the school found a permanent home in New Haven in 1716. In 1718, following a substantial gift from Elihu Yale, a wealthy English businessman who had been born in Boston, the institution's name was changed to Yale College. In the early 1720s, religious controversy gripped Yale, as the school's rector, Rev. Timothy Cutler, along with one of the tutors and two neighboring ministers were accused of converting to Anglicanism. Determined to enforce orthodoxy at the instution, in 1722 the school's trustees dismissed Rev. Cutler and the offending tutor, and adopted a resolution requiring that, in the future, all rectors and tutors must declare their assent to the Saybrook Platform.
The Great Awakening sent shock waves through the colony in the middle of the eighteenth century, ripping the Congregational Church apart. Those who embraced the Awakening were known as New Lights, while those opposed to it became known as Old Lights. Unhappy with the often unemotional services of their regular ministers, New Lights in many towns petitioned to form separate religious societies or churches. Often Old Lights would oppose these attempts, arguing that the New Lights were neither sober (because of the emotional nature of their services) nor dissenting (because they continued to be Congregationalists). In 1741, Old Lights who tried to suppress the Awakening succeeded in convincing the General Assembly to pass an Itineracy Law, which prohibited traveling ministers from preaching in a Connecticut town without an invitation from the town's minister. Many historians believe that this law was the spark that led to the creation of issue politics in the colony.
During the American Revolution many of the colony's Anglicans, most of which were concentrated in Fairfield County, remained Loyalists. One Anglican, Moses Dunbar of Bristol, was convicted of treason and hanged for being a Loyalist.
Congregationalism remained the established church in Connecticut throughout the Revolutionary Period, although, with time, more dominations were exempted as "sober dissenting" churches. With the adoption of Connecticut's 1818 state constitution, the Congregational Church was disestablished and separation of church and state finally came to Connecticut.