Hey Redditors!
In my US History class, we are learning about how the colonies were formed by the British and the different kinds of charters which Kings would grant to companies. After reading 100 pages, I still don't really understand how Connecticut was founded. I know that Providence, Rhode Island was founded by Roger Williams in hopes of obtaining religious freedoms in which members of all faith could worship freely. I also read about Lord Baltimore, John Calvert, who made Maryland into a place where Christians and Protestants could get along with each other.
I always thought that Connecticut was founded by Anne Hutchinson's followers after her death. However, I also remember reading that Charles II gave his brother James, Duke of York, a charter for the territory around(including) Connecticut.
So, in the end, how was Connecticut really founded? How did it prosper? What were Connecticut's main sources of income? Were there plantations? Slaves? Did they use the Headright system?
Sorry about all the questions. Thanks in advance!
It sounds like the confusion might be arising from the tangle of land claims related to Connecticut that took decades to clear up.
It is correct that the original settlements in Connecticut were founded by followers of Hutchinson in the 1630s. Despite being self-governing, these settlements on the Connecticut River had no legal basis for existence until they successfully petitioned Charles II and received a royal charter in 1662. Up to that time the Connecticut Colony was slowly expanding and absorbing rival and less successful colonies at Saybrook and around New Haven.
John Winthrop the Younger, son of the first governor of Massachusetts, was a resident and magistrate in the area, and led the successful royal petition for the charter, and was the first governor under the charter.
In 1664, the English conquered New Amsterdam from the Dutch, and Charles granted it to his brother the Duke of York, the future James II. The New York grant was literally all over the place, including present-day New York State, New Jersey, Vermont, Connecticut west of the Connecticut River, eastern Maine, and Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket.
Connecticut's charter gave the colony a "sea to sea claim" and the colony sparred with New York over where the border lay for decades, with New York giving up its claims on the Connecticut River Valley and Connecticut its claims on the Hudson River Valley in 1683. Connecticut did not give up its other, more western land claims easily, with settler fights breaking out in the "Yankee-Pennamite Wars" of the 1780s, and Connecticut relinquishing its last land claim, the Western Reserve in Ohio, only in 1800.
