New Haven Colony

New Haven Colony
1638–1664
Flag
Map of the Connecticut, New Haven, and Saybrook colonies
Status	English colony
Capital	New Haven
Common languages	English
Religion	Puritanism
Government	Self-governing colony Theocracy
Governor
• 1639-1658	Theophilus Eaton
• 1658-1659	Francis Newman
• 1661-1664	William Leete
Legislature	General Court
History
• Established	1638
• Merged with Connecticut Colony	1664
Currency	Pound sterling
Succeeded by Connecticut Colony Province of New York Province of Pennsylvania Province of New Jersey
Today part of	United States  ∟Connecticut  ∟New York  ∟New Jersey  ∟Pennsylvania  ∟Delaware

New Haven Colony was an English colony from 1638 to 1664 that included settlements on the north shore of Long Island Sound, with outposts in modern-day New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. The colony joined Connecticut Colony in 1664.

The history of the colony was a series of disappointments and failures. The most serious problem was that New Haven Colony never had a charter giving it legal title to exist. The larger, stronger colony of Connecticut to the north did have a charter. New Haven's leaders were businessmen and traders, but they were never able to build up a large or profitable trade because their agricultural base was poor, farming the rocky soil was difficult, and the location was isolated.

Founding as Quinnipiac

In 1637, a group of London merchants and their families moved to Boston with the intention of creating a new settlement. The leaders were John Davenport, a Puritan minister, and Theophilus Eaton, a wealthy merchant who brought £3,000 to the venture. Both had experience in fitting out vessels for the Massachusetts Bay Company. The two ships that they chartered arrived in Boston on June 26, 1637. They learned about the area around the Quinnipiac River from militia engaged in the Pequot War, so Eaton set sail to view the area in late August. The site seemed ideal for trade, with a good port lying between Boston and the Dutch city of New Amsterdam on Manhattan and good access to the furs of the Connecticut River valley settlements of Hartford and Springfield.

Eaton returned to Boston, leaving seven men to remain through the winter and make preparations for the arrival of the rest of the company. The main body of settlers landed on April 14, 1638, numbering about 250, with the addition of some from Massachusetts. A number of the early dwellings were caves or "cellers", partially underground and carved into hillsides.

A 19th-century map showing New Haven in 1641, featuring the town's nine-square plan with the Green and meeting house at its center.

The first English settlers gave their settlement the name Quinnipiac (rendered in various spellings, including “Quinipiek” in local records from the time). The name lasted until September 1, 1640 (O.S.), when records of the plantation’s general court note “This towne now named Newhaven [sic].”

The settlers had no official charter. Historian Edward Channing describes them as squatters, whereas author Edward Atwater holds that a land purchase from the local natives had been effected sometime before their arrival in April, although no written deed was signed until November 24, 1638. A second deed was made December 11, 1638 for a tract north of the first purchase.

Fundamental Agreement

A 19th-century engraving of the first New Haven meeting house, which was in use from 1639 to 1670.

On October 25, 1639, the colonists adopted a "Fundamental Agreement" for self-government, partly as a result of a similar action in the Connecticut Colony. According to its terms, a court composed of 16 burgesses, i.e. voting citizens, was established to appoint a magistrate and officials and to conduct the business of the plantation. The only eligible voters were "planters" who were members of "some or other of the approved Churches of New England". This excluded indentured servants, temporary residents, and transient persons, who were considered to have no permanent interest in the community.

They further determined "that the word of God shall be the only rule to be attended unto in ordering the affairs of government in this plantation." Theophilus Eaton was chosen as the first Magistrate. As the Bible contains no reference to trial by jury, the colonists eliminated it and the magistrate sat in judgment.

This is said to have been one of "the first examples in history of a written constitution organizing a government and defining its powers."

Formation of New Haven Colony

The plantation (or town) soon had neighboring settlements established by other groups of Puritans from England.:

• Nearby, two settlements independent of Quinnipiac formed: the settlement at Wepowauge (later known as Milford) by a land grant to English settlers from the Paugusset on February 12, 1639 and at Menunkatuck (later known as Guilford) by land grant to English settlers from the Quinnipiac on September 29, 1639.
• Settlers from New Haven established Rippowam (later known as Stamford) and Southold on the North Fork of Long Island in 1640.
• And about 1640, New Haven bought the land that became Greenwich from the Siwanoy Indians. Through the intrigues of Dutch Gov. Peter Stuyvesant, the first inhabitants revolted with the Dutch.

On October 23, 1643, in the context of the formation of the New England Confederation, composed of Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth and Connecticut Colonies, for joint military action against threats of attack by natives, the New Haven Plantation and its subsidiary settlements, Stamford and Southhold on Long Island, were combined with the independent towns of Milford and Guilford and named the New Haven Colony which then joined the Confederation. The town of Branford was settled in 1644 by residents from Wethersfield, Connecticut Colony, who were dissatisfied with the theocratic rule there. They joined the New Haven Colony. Eaton served as governor of the new colony until his death in 1658.

Expansion of the Colony

In 1641, the colony claimed the area that is now South Jersey and Philadelphia after buying land south of Trenton along the Delaware River from the Lenape tribe. Cape May, New Jersey and Salem, New Jersey were among the communities that were founded.

The treaty with the Lenape placed no westward limit on the land west of the Delaware, which became the legal basis for a Connecticut "sea to sea" claim of owning all the land on both sides of the Delaware from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. This set the stage for the Pennamite-Yankee War of 150 years later.

In 1642, 50 families on a ship captained by George Lamberton settled at the mouth of Schuylkill River to establish the trading post at what is today Philadelphia. The Dutch and Swedes who were already in the area burned their buildings, and a court in New Sweden convicted Lamberton of "trespassing, conspiring with the Indians." The New Haven Colony did not get any support from its New England patrons, and Puritan Governor John Winthrop testified that the "Delaware Colony" "dissolved" owing to "sickness and mortality."

The Phantom Ship

Initially, the colony had only ships capable of coastal travel, and trade with England was done with the Massachusetts Bay Colony as the middleman. In 1645, the colony built an 80-ton ocean-going ship to be captained by George Lamberton of New Haven, a merchant gentleman and a sea captain from London. He and others had tried to establish a settlement in Delaware, but they were resisted by the Swedes who had settled there. He was one of the original founders of the Colony of New Haven. He was allotted land in block 7 and owned over 266 acres. Captain Lamberton and others from New Haven built one of the first ships out of New England for a commercial venture to the West Indies. The disaster in Philadelphia, combined with sinking of its only Atlantic ship, weakened the New Haven colony's future negotiating position.

Legacy

The ship disappeared in 1646, and its fate is the theme of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1847 poem "The Phantom Ship". According to Longfellow's poem, an apparition of the ship appeared on the horizon following a June thunder shower near sunset six months after it disappeared. Those on shore were said to have recognized their friends on deck. The ship's masts then appeared to snap, the ship pitched, the passengers were thrown into the sea, and the ship capsized. The poem concludes that the vision was sent to "quiet their troubled spirits" and the event gave the town closure.

A ship sailed from New Haven,

And the keen and frosty airs,

That filled her sails at parting,

Were heavy with good men's prayers.

"O Lord! if it be thy pleasure"—

Thus prayed the old divine—

"To bury our friends in the ocean,

Take them, for they are thine!"

But Master Lamberton muttered,

And under his breath said he,

"This ship is so crank and walty

I fear our grave she will be!"

Harboring the Regicides

In 1660, following the Stuart Restoration, Edward Whalley and his son-in-law William Goffe, two of the 59 commissioners who signed the 1649 execution warrant of Charles I, fled England to North America. They sought protection from agents of Charles II, who intended to bring them to justice. In 1661 they arrived in New Haven. John Davenport arranged for them to hide in the hills northwest of the town. They purportedly took refuge in a rock formation in present-day West Rock Ridge State Park. Another regicide commissioner, John Dixwell, joined them at a later time.

Three Judges' Cave today bears a historical marker in their name.

Merger with Connecticut Colony

New Haven urgently needed a Royal charter, but the colony had made enemies in London by hiding and protecting the regicide judges. An uneasy competition ruled New Haven's relations with the larger and more powerful Connecticut River settlements centered on Hartford. New Haven published a complete legal code in 1656, but the law remained very much church-centered. A major difference between the New Haven and Connecticut colonies was that the Connecticut Colony permitted other churches to operate on the basis of "sober dissent", while the New Haven Colony only permitted the Puritan church to exist. A royal charter was issued to Connecticut in 1662, ending New Haven's period as a separate colony, and its towns were merged into the government of Connecticut Colony in 1664.

Many factors contributed to the loss of independence for New Haven, including the loss of her strongest governor in Eaton, the economic disaster of losing her only ocean-going ship, the Philadelphia disaster, and royal ire for harboring the regicide judges.

Founding of Newark

Main article: History of Newark, New Jersey

A group of New Haven colonists led by Robert Treat and others moved to establish a new community in New Jersey in 1666, seeking to maintain the Puritan religious exclusivism and theocracy that was lost with the New Haven Colony's merger with Connecticut Colony. Treat wanted to name the new community after Milford, Connecticut. However Abraham Pierson was to urge that the new community be named "New Ark" or "New Work" which was to evolve into the name Newark, New Jersey.

See also

• History of Connecticut
• Robert Seeley

Further reading

• Andrews, Charles M. The Colonial Period of American History: The Settlements II (1936).
• Blue, Jon C. The Case of the Piglet's Paternity: Trials from the New Haven Colony, 1639–1663. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2015.
• Calder, Isabel M. The New Haven Colony New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1934.
• Clark, George Larkin. A History of Connecticut: Its People and Institutions. (1914).
• Hoadly, Charles J., ed. (1857). Records of the Colony and Plantation of New Haven from 1638 to 1649. Hartford: Case, Tiffany and Company.
• Lambert, Edward Rodolphus. History of the Colony of New Haven: Before and After the Union with Connecticut. Containing a Particular Description of the Towns which Composed that Government, Viz. New Haven, Milford, Guilford, Branford, Stamford, & Southold, L. I., with a Notice of the Towns which Have Been Set Off from "the Original Six." Hitchcock & Stafford, 1838.
• Little, Ann M. "Men on Top? The Farmer, the Minister, and Marriage in Early New England," Pennsylvania History (1997) vol 64 Special Issue, pp 123–150, based on records of New Haven Colony
• History and antiquities of New Haven (Conn.) from its earliest settlement to the present time (1831)