CHAPTER IX
ATTEMPTS TO UNIFY NEW ENGLAND
As a result of the complete crushing of the power of the Pequots their whole country was opened to peaceful settlement, and the extension of the frontier in that direction became rapid. Within about two years from the signing of the treaty with the savages, the foundations were laid of Guilford, New Haven, Milford, Stratford, Fairfield, Norwalk, and Stamford along the Sound, and of Southampton and Southold on the eastern end of Long Island, thus making a continuous line of English settlement up to the Dutch boundary, if not, indeed, within it.[1]
For its size, New Haven was undoubtedly the wealthiest colony in New England, its assessed valuation, the year after it was planted, having been £33,000, or the present equivalent of, perhaps, $7oo,ooo.[2] Its founders, under the leadership of the Reverend John Davenport, a Nonconformist London clergyman, and Theophilus Eaton, a schoolmate of his, had arrived in the early summer of 1637, just in time to take part in the Antinomian controversy and the taxes for the Pequot war. Mr. Davenport was requested to contribute to the former, and Mr. Eaton to the latter.[3] Their company was a distinguished one, including several other wealthy London merchants besides Eaton; five ministers; four school-teachers, among whom was the first president of Harvard; the father of Elihu Yale, the founder of Yale University; and Michael Wigglesworth, the "lurid morning star" of New England
- ↑ The Southampton settlers at first tried to plant well within it, but were forced out by the Dutch. Cf. N. Y. Col. Docts., vols, n, pp. I45#., and xiv, pp. 30 ff. Adams, History of Southampton, pp. 48 ff.
- ↑ Estimated from entry in Records of the Colony and Plantation of New Haven (Hartford, 1857), p. 25. Hereafter cited as New Haven Records.
- ↑ J. Winthrop, History, vol. 1, pp. 271 ff.; Massachusetts Records, vol. 1, pp. 210, 225.
