Week 15: Towards Freedom

Like the inability to hold a live, squirming fish in one’s hands with a firm and strong grip, England was unable to hold onto a colonial world that was squirming under socio-economic shifts. Perhaps if England had exercised a looser hold with reactionary muscles, the squirming colony would have remained at least in their hands. The force exerted against the colony served as its’ emancipative strength. This was certainly the sentiment at large in the Connecticut colony.

Those who had the influence and vehicle to make known dissenting spirits seemingly held the voice of the people, and proved such influence by the Revolution itself. For example, a 1765 newspaper printed in New Haven by Benjamin Mecom is a page long diatribe against ideological slavery, personifying it as a horrific monster bent on obtaining a total and indiscriminating bondage of the will. Interestingly enough, Mecom himself was nephew to another famous ideological printer, Benjamin Franklin.

The Great Awakening not only revitalized a personal and emotive relationship with God, it applied a new hermeneutic to Scriptural authority and what earthly authorities should look like and how they are to function. Some conservative Old Lights in Connecticut were loyalists in that they believed God’s earthly authority over them rested in the English crown. New Lights, they argued, were intoxicated with the emotional enthusiasm that clouded their rational minds and diverged them from a traditional path of Biblical precepts. The scales were even in more favor of the impassioned New Lights and pre-revolutionaries because of the original purpose of religious freedoms in the Great Migration to the colonial world almost 150 years prior. England resorted to the strong arm in trying to assuage the situation to their detriment.

A 1773 copy of the English report of Connecticut’s session laws detail repeals of sundry laws made by Connecticut’s own general assembly. It seems that England was seeking to flex a monarchial muscle for the sake of doing so, to make the point that the crown was the final and authoritative arbiter in colonial matters. A response is unknown, but it can be assumed that by 1773, people like Benjamin Mecom were incensed at this strong-arming of English policy. History obviously shows that revolutionary sentiments gained momentum and reached a fever pitch in 1775 when there was no going back. Connecticut was soon to transition from English colony to American state.

Mecom, Benjamin. “To the Publick of Connecticut.” 1765.

George, Wyllys. “Heads of Enquiry, Relative to the Present State and Condition of His Majesty’s Colony of Connecticut.” New London: Judah P. Spooner, 1773.

Week 14: (Lack of) Religious Diversity (much of) Religious complexity

The colony of Connecticut was founded in the early 17^th

century with the full intention of operating under Biblical parameters. This ecclesiastical autonomy from the Anglican Church served to model the Puritan ideals for living within a framework whose ultimate authority was God above any earthly, though submitting to earthly authority within the precepts of such submission as laid out in scripture. The resultant religious system was popularly known as Congregationalism, named for the unique nature of the churches’ authority as autonomous from any regional or national association.

The Congregational system remained the majority religious group through the colonial period, with the Connecticut government, called the Establishment, or Assembly, acted as the civil ruling body. In 1708 an allowance by the English crown allowed the minority dissenting churches in Connecticut to form, but few actually did before the Awakening. These marginal religious groups included Anglicans, Baptists, Quakers, and a smattering of Presbyterians with a few others. Interestingly enough, after the Awakening revivals in Connecticut, these marginal groups gained momentum due the growth in population and the plain theological schisms that ensued within the Congregational polity.efault d

In 1708 the Saybrook Platform was passed effectually giving ecclesiastical authority to pastors and taking it out of the hands of the congregation. This Platform was enacted to help truncate the number of dissenting churches and to address the declining spiritual interest of the people of the community. The Saybrook Platform was a colony-wide reform effort that carried a sense of politic with it; religious though it was in function, it affected life for everyone in the colony and introduced divisiveness among the people. This type of public interest would gain momentum as the 18^th century progressed and culminate in revolutionary ideologies of the 1770’s. The Platform was a source of contention that gained momentum during revival fires in the 1730’s and ‘40s.

In 1735 a marked change occurred that would precipitate the protestant Great Awakening five years later. Jonathan Edward’s (a Connecticut native) church in Northampton, Massachusetts and Jonathan Marsh’s parish church in Windsor, Connecticut experienced an outpouring of God’s spirit on these respective congregations. Until this time, the general spiritual state of the Connecticut churches had been in a seemingly gradual decline since really the founding of the colony. Described as a spirit of declension, ministers constantly exhorted their congregations to repent of sinful idolatrous lethargies and return to worshiping Jesus Christ exclusively. It is arguable that a decline in spiritual interest directly correlated with economic expansion and increased material acquisitions available. This distraction with temporal interests abruptly changed colony-wide starting in 1735.

Benjamin Trumball, in his Civil and Ecclesiastical History of Connecticut, records this precipitating awakening occurred first in Windsor, then in East-Windsor (where Timothy Edwards, Jonathan Edwards’ father, was minister), in Coventry, Durham, Lebanon-Crank, Mansfield, Bolton, Tolland, Hebron, New Haven and Norwich. These were only pockets that experienced an increase in affections and attention to Christ and the majority of the colony remained in a state of spiritual lethargy.

These small awakenings gathered much momentum during the winter of 1740-1741, when Anglican George Whitefield visited New England. Whitefield, an Anglican reformer, gave highly emotive yet doctrinally sound sermons reflecting Calvinistic dogma, appealed for the people’s repentance and return to God. His open-air venue preaching and itinerancy gave way not only to mass popularity and support, but critics of his embellishing followers as well. Protestants in Connecticut soon became either aligned with the label Old Lights or New Lights, or even, like the Edwardses, moderates.

The once marginalized religious groups such as Anglicans, Baptists, and Presbyterians were soon amalgamated into the New Light grouping, who offered a more ecumenical view than the staunch and antiquated Old Light view. These two factions shaped Connecticut religion throughout the mid 18^th century, and precipitated the opinionated viewpoints that would soon shape revolutionary era rhetoric.

Bushman, Richard L.. From Puritan to Yankee. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967.

Trumball, Benjamin. A Complete History of Connecticut, Civil and Ecclesiastical. New Haven: Maltby, Goldsmith and Co., 1818.

Week 12: Slow and steady through the 17th cen. to the 18th.

Colonial scholar Jackson Turner Main, in his book Society and Economy in Colonial Connecticut, helpfully presents a detailed study of probate inventories and other tangible assets of colonial Connecticut. This academic archeology lies more in records and documents rather than in dirt, but nevertheless provides a clear understanding of everyday life in colonial Connecticut. An insightful result of such a detailed study is the ability to compare the 17^th and 18^th centuries and see how society and economy precipitated the eventual revolutionary period of the 1770’s.

A sampling of Main’s research includes (some tables are inclusive of both 17^th and 18^th centuries, others are exclusively one or the other) age distribution and life expectancy of adult men, distribution of wealth, labor and land, tables detailing various nuances of farming life, standard living tables of shoemakers, weavers, and tailors, and occupations of leaders in the colony. These are only samplings, but they help us to understand the flow of life in the colony over those two centuries. Age distribution and life expectancy of adult males help us to see why Connecticut did not grow exponentially or expediently in the 17^th century as other colonies had. The lack of women in the newly annexed colony found many young men moving on through Connecticut to other frontier spaces in search of not only companionship but also land to raise families on. Connecticut thus did not enjoy an economic growth spurt until the 18^th century when the slow trickle of immigrating Massachusetts and Englishmen had settled more established towns. Plus, life expectancy was low for men unaccustomed to privations of frontier life.

The close study of farm life and the artisan-type trades show how Connecticut was first primarily a place of sustenance living, with towns founded around churches exemplifying the parish system in England. The 18^th century saw a gradual economic upswing with the introduction of more artisans and professionals as noted in the number of shoemakers, weavers, and tailors. Another interesting facet of this study shows the departure of western European stratification of social class in an aristocracy per se, a preponderance of a laboring class firmly established a healthy middle class reflecting self-actualizing ideologies that would be fleshed out more firmly towards the revolutionary period.

Another interesting piece I was able to peruse was from the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. The title was “Puritan Town Planting in New Haven.” John Davenport and other immigrant founders of New Haven, Connecticut, sought to establish the new town on principals laid out in Scripture, thus reflecting the Puritan desire to stay Biblically centered. The town itself physically is arguably demarcated in such a way that reflected a New Jerusalem. Obvious parallels are the symmetry in Biblical models and the distinctive square shape of New Haven. This reverential credence to Scriptural authority comes to the forefront as the religious fervor stimulated by the Great Awakening creates pre-revolutionary excitement in the 1770’s.

Archer, John. "Puritan Town Planning in New Haven." Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 34, no. 2 (May 1975): 140-149.

Main,Jackson T.. Society and Economy in Colonial Connecticut. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985.

A New Haven

Interestingly enough, most immigrants in 17^th and 18^th century Connecticut were actually emigrants from Massachusetts; most were English subjects who were Puritan non-conformists looking to gain more land and space, a definite pull factor. The pull factors were at the same time push factors as well. Families and the progeny of those families were quickly taking up the growing Massachusetts colony’s land. Connecticut lay to the west and so did opportunity and space. Half of Connecticut’s towns were founded the first forty years of the 18^th century. These towns were formed and founded largely by third generation emigrating young English men from the Massachusetts colony not finding land available as their fathers had inherited from the first generation. The majority of the population was of English heritage, but, depending on sources, 20-25% were of other nationalities.

Butler, Jon. Becoming America. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000.

Conforti, Joseph A.. Saints and Strangers. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006.

Main ,Jackson T.. Society and Economy in Colonial Connecticut. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985.

Week 7 Brog: Labor and builing up from within

As the colony of Connecticut was founded for families who wished to spread out from home base as it were in the Massachusetts colony, the reasons were not the same as in other industrial minded colonies. The religious privileges to worship freely were the main motivating factor and the economic impact was initially centered on the self-sustainment of these Bible-based communities. This self-sustainment was mainly of an agricultural sort, and as the colony grew, the agrarian mindset expanded into profit enterprises for the communities in Connecticut. Many different people filled the needs of labor and as the colony grew in population, resources, and inter-colonial and international dialogue, so did the nature and development of the labor force.

Beginning early in the colony, the labor force included all people at one time or another. Following Biblical precepts and imperatives, men and women in the nuclear family all contributed to the family and community need. Officially, the labor force became more delineated as the colony grew and more civic structures were put in place. In Jackson Turner Main’s work on Connecticut society and economy, he lays out the labor force in four groups which become helpful in understanding the unique demographic that was developing in all colonies. The four groups were slaves (of both sexes and both African and Indian heritage), indentured servants, free dependent men (mostly sons of local families and single), and free independent men whose names are documented on church and tax records. The free independents were usually sons who were single or married who were old enough to own land, but had not acquired it, and also migrants and single unmarried men as well.

In Connecticut in the 1600’s the majority of these servants were sons, being mostly over 50% of the labor force. The slave trade with the West Indies saw a slow but steady increase in purchases of African slaves, as well as the appropriation of Indians as farm laborers. Initially, it would appear from probates that Connecticut slave holdings were not of a coercive nature as to strictly hard and sometimes harsh manual labor. Most of the slaves (which were still a very small minority in the 1680’s) appear to simply be household help who “raised their owners standard of living, rather than engaging in production for the market.”

The slow growing slave labor force helped to establish long-range economic sustainment for the Connecticut colony. The familial infrastructure ensured a solid foundation to start on, with values of good stewardship in the micro translated long term in the macro. Eventually, a strong middling class of married landowners emerged with imports of an agricultural and livestock sort. The colony started and continued to be very well self-sustaining all during these differing labor systems.

Main,Jackson T.. Society and Economy in Colonial Connecticut. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985.

Connecticut's early infrastructure

Daily life in colonial Connecticut was unique among the other colonies of the British crown. It was comparable in form to other colonies but in function it did not entirely comport. In fact, the contrast of social infrastructure grew as time moved on. This contrast grew due to the noticeable lack of progression that characterized the other colonies, especially in the realm government. One can look macroscopically at colonial Connecticut to understand the microscopic daily level.

Connecticut was from the beginning an offshoot of three Massachusetts towns. These towns sought not to defect in a defiant sense, but to re-establish themselves as a theocracy in part and practice. Scholars and theologians debate whether Connecticut was throwing off a yoke of monarchial rule in favor of church autonomy. Most lucid arguments are in favor of a Connecticut desire to be self-governed in practice, but still adhered to a hierarchal submission to the sovereign crown. The social and political world in colonial Connecticut was intertwined into one; the church-centered religious experiment.

This “Puritan Experiment” had most of the practical characteristics common of colonial life in America during the 17^th and 18^th centuries. With over 80% of the population residing on farms or small farming communities, Connecticut was primarily agricultural. It did have a small exportation to other colonies growing as the colony itself grew. It seems that Connecticut was not in need of materials from the motherland herself; Connecticut traded for goods and supplies from within the colonies, with trade even into British interests in the Caribbean. The macrocosm does explain the microcosm quite appropriately in colonial Connecticut.

Whatever the vocation of the colonial Connecticut man, if he was a husband, father, and Christian, his family modeled Puritanical ethic based on Biblical models. It seems a large number of Puritans settled first in Connecticut, and set the standard of family life to a large degree. Cotton Mather, a Massachusetts Puritan pastor, said that families are the nurseries of all societies, and the first combinations of all mankind. Out of the nuclear family, with a male headship hierarchy resonating Biblical precepts, came the social and (early) political structure that would determine Connecticut’s course from colony through even statehood. This structure was built on the foundation of the congregational church. Ever town was built around one, with the pastor and lay elders in a social and governing authoritative position. This church-centered society dramatically contrasted with other colonies such as Virginia, where a taut relationship existed with England and the Anglican Church system.

All was not utopian in the sense of the Bible-based young commonwealth. Connecticut endured its share of internal strife with native Indians as much as any other of the colonies did. As mentioned in the last brog, the war and skirmishes with the Peguot Indians caused much colonial consternation. A benefit from the Pequot War was the alliance it wrought with Narrangasat and Mohegan Indians in the area. This coalition was give and take over the years, with the colonists eventually coming out on top as the dominating presence in the area.

The Pequot War was destructive to the colony. It was in fact the most destructive was per capita in United States history. The colonist reeled for ruined farms, crops, and livestock stolen or slaughtered. This conflict did prepare Connecticut for the presently unseen future of more Indian conflicts.

Andrews, Charles M.. "On Some Early Aspects of Connecticut History." The New ENgland Quarterly 17 no. 1 (1944): 3-24.

Graham, Judith S.. Puritan Family Life. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2000.

Trumball, Benjamin. A complete history of Connecticut. New Haven: Maltby, Goldsmith and Co. and Samuel Wadsworth, 1818.

Interactions with natives and a solid foundation

The story of early Connecticut was unique to the colonies incorporated under the Great Seal of the English monarchy. Two cultures collided when Puritans from the Massachusetts Bay colony pushed westward into the Connecticut River Valley. These Puritans met a myriad of native tribes, ranging from the Pequots and their offshoot the Mohegans, to the Narrangansetts who traversed the border of Connecticut and Massachusetts. These were all tribes under the umbrella term of Algonquian, which the colony’s namesake was kept from. “Quanet-ta-cut”, meaning “on the long tidal river” was transliterated into the English “Connecticut”.

The intermingling of the Indians and English met both amicably and with opposition. A more latent account would be the Pequot War in 1637, a delayed colonial response to the murder of a Virginian captain, John Stone. The Pequot were aggressive and savage people, not able to make allies with even other Indians because of their acquisitional desires for land and power. They helped formulate a negative stereotype of Indians for the Puritan colonists. Pequot is an Algonquian term that means “destroyers of men”. The English did have interlopers that labored on their behalf, if only in part.

Uncas was sachem of the Mohegan tribe that had seceded from the Pequots and also was a brother-in-law to the Pequot sachem Sassacus. Scholar Robert Erwin states that Uncas was a consummate statesman and befriended several colonial Connecticutians of prominent postitions. These men included military savvy Captain John Mason, and Thomas Hooker who led the initial migration west from Massachusetts. His espionage and counter-surveillance against the Pequot tribe aided an English victory and secured footing for further towns to flourish there. It is recorded however, that Uncas was quoted as saying “I am no little dog of the English”. This was in response to expectations of his succor on behalf of his new English allies. The Uncas situation was a big part of an even larger picture that explains a thriving English colony in Connecticut.

The first 25 years of the infant colony were spent as an autonomous civic venture, operating under the auspices of the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut. The Fundamental Orders were for all intents and purposes a constitution for the towns that made up Connecticut. It had not authority of even legal allegiance to the crown or the Massachusetts Bay Colony. This was an assembly at first of people from the Massachusetts towns of Dorchester, Watertown and Newton. Thomas Hooker directed the mini-migration west and out of the Massachusetts towns, established Windsor, Wethersfield and Hartford. The town names are certainly indicative of the nostalgic ties to England.

Along with resonating names brought over from the motherland, Connecticutians also brought the civic structural idea of parishes, where a town was localized around a church body, which in turn was the ancillary governing body. The difference in the colony was that the church was not subordinate to any authority, except God and His word. These churches became congregational in their modus operandi. More on governmental and church structure later. The colony did eventually became an ancillary to the crown in 1662, and by then the town/church infrastructure had successfully be able to facilitate a viable and growing community.

Sources:

Erwin, Robert. "Uncas the Mohegan: No Little Dog of the English." The Antioch Review 65 no. 2 (2007): 352-361.

Hull, Moran, Brooks B., Gerald F. . "The Churching of Colonial Connecticut: A Case Study." Review of Religious Research 41 no. 2 (1999): 165-183.

Jones, Mary Jeanne Anderson. Congregational Connecticut, 1636-1662. Middletown. Wesleyan University Press. 1968.