OF THE

COLONY AND PLANTATION

OF

NEW HAVEN,

FROM 1638 TO 1649.

TRANSCRIBED AND EDITED IN ACCORDANCE WITH A RESOLUTION

OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF CONNECTICUT.

WITH OCCASIONAL NOTES AND AN APPENDIX.

By CHARLES J. HOADLY, M. A.

State Librarian of Conn., Member of the Conn. Hist. Soc., Cor. Memb. N. E. Hist. Gen. Soc.

HARTFORD:

PRINTED BY CASE, TIFFANY AND COMPANY,

FOR THE EDITOR.

1857.

4514894-43

HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY

At a General Assembly of the State of Connecticut, holden at New Haven in said State, on the first Wednesday of May, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and fifty-six :

Resolved, That the secretary be authorized to purchase for the use of the state, two hundred and fifty copies of the proposed publication of the Records of the Colony of New Haven, prior to the union with Connecticut, transcribed and edited by Charles J. Hoadly, Esq. Provided, that such publication shall be authenticated by the official certificate of the secretary, as a true copy of the original record; and provided, also, that the expense of the same shall not exceed two dollars and fifty cents per volume.

Resolved, That the copies so purchased be distributed as follows; one copy to the town clerk of each town in this state, to be preserved in his office for the use of the town; one copy to the governor, and to each of the state officers of this state; one copy to the governor of each of the several states and territories of the United States, to be deposited in their several state libraries; one copy to the library of congress; one copy to the Smithsonian Institute; one copy to each of the colleges of this state; twenty five copies to Mr. Alexander Vattemare for international exchange; and the remainder of the said two hundred and fifty copies to be deposited in the office of the secretary, subject to the disposal of the general assembly.

INTRODUCTION.

THE original manuscript, of which the present volume is intended to be, as nearly as practicable, a reproduction, is a large folio of seventeen by eleven inches in size, containing about two hundred and fifty pages. It was evidently written with some care, and the chirography of the whole might be called, for the period, superior, more particularly so that of Thomas Fugill, the first secretary, although it is more abundant in contractions and abbreviations than that of Richard Perry or Francis Newman, his successors.

Many years before the employment of the volume in this country as a Record Book for New Haven Colony, five pages of it had been used, by some great merchant in London, as a Day Book or Journal, and it thus begins,-"Laus Deo, In London, the 6th of January, Anno Dominæ 1608." Who the merchant was to whom it belonged does not appear, and is unknown; it has been a tradition, however, that it was "Governor Eaton's Ledger," but as Eaton was born in 1590, it would hardly seem probable that a youth of eighteen should carry on business, both foreign and domestic, to so great an extent as would appear to be indicated by the entries in this book.

At their first settlement, though within the limits of the old Connecticut Patent, the plantations of New Haven, Guilford and Milford, intended to be, if possible, separate and distinct governments, but finding themselves singly too weak, early in the spring of the year 1643, they confederated with New Haven, which had already by the

purchase and settlement of Stamford, Yennycock or Southold, and Totoket or Branford, become the most considerable in size and influence, and thus was formed the Jurisdiction of New Haven.

The present volume contains the records of the Colony of New Haven while it remained distinct, the beginning of the records of the Jurisdiction, and the records of the Town or Plantation up to the year 1650.

From April, 1644, to May, 1653, the records of the Jurisdiction are lost, save that in this volume we have the proceedings of a Court of Magistrates, June 14th, 1646, and a Court of Election, October 27th, 1646. How long these records have been missing we are ignorant, but may conjecture that they have been so for a period of about a century. That Dr. Trumbull did not have access to them, while collecting materials for the history of Connecticut, that is from about 1770 to 1774, is evident upon an examination of that work, and had their disappearance then been recent, we should suppose that there would have been made some reference to the fact, either by him or by the General Assembly in their resolution of May, 1772.

The dates of some meetings of the Jurisdiction Courts for this period, collected from the records of the United Colonies and from those of the town of Guilford, are inserted in their chronological order in the form of notes.

In a note at page 463 is found an account of some of the proceedings of a General Court for the Jurisdiction, May 30th, 1649, which is taken from Thompson's History of Long Island, but I have thus far been unable to learn the source whence the author of that work obtained the citation. The editor has been informed that Mr. Thompson's papers afford no clue, and that it is not found in the records of the town of Southold, L. I. It is to be hoped that the extract may lead to the discovery of the missing volume.

In May, 1772, perhaps at the instance of Governor Trumbull, who, as the venerable historian of Connecticut assures us, had a most thorough acquaintance with the history of the colony, the General Assembly passed the following resolution:

"Whereas the first antient Book of Records of this Colony remain

ing in the Secretary's office, and the first Records of the Jurisdiction of New Haven, in the office of the Town Clerk of the Town of New Haven, are much worn and decayed, and by constant use in danger of being totally ruined, Resolved by this Assembly, that the Secretary be directed and he is hereby directed to procure the said Records to be fairly transcribed into some proper book or books to be by him procured for that purpose, and laid before this Assembly to be compared and duly authenticated for common use, to the end that the said original ancient Records may be safely preserved and used only upon special and important occasions. The secretary is also directed to receive into his hands and deposit in his office the antient Book of Records of the Jurisdiction of New Haven, now remaining in the office of the clerk of the County Court of New Haven County, who is also hereby requested to deliver the same to him accordingly, that the same may remain for publick use in the publick archives of the Colony."*

The first volume of the Connecticut Records was copied and presented to the Legislature for authentication in May, 1773, but why the New Haven Records were not then also transcribed we are not informed.

The authorities of the town of New Haven have within a few years taken commendable care for the preservation and safe keeping of this first volume of their Records, by causing a copy to be made, and by enclosing the original in a copper box.

In executing the trust of editing these Records, accuracy has been the chief thing aimed at, and to obtain this neither time nor labor have been spared; every page has been carefully compared by the editor with the original; contractions and abbreviations have been followed, but with regard to the use of capital letters and marks of punctuation, it has not been deemed necessary strictly to adhere to the copy; still, however, this liberty has been used with caution, and the editor has not knowingly altered the sense of any passage thereby,

*Colony Records, vol. xi, p. 105.