The New Student's Reference Work/Hooker, Thomas

Hooker, Thomas, a clergyman, born in Leicestershire, England, in 1586, after studying theology at Cambridge University and attracting great attention as a lecturer and preacher, came in 1633 to America. He had been cited before Archbishop Laud and threatened with the judgment of the Court of High Commission because of his Puritan tendencies. Hooker spent three years preaching in Holland prior to his emigration to New England. He became one of the two most famous of New England ministers; the other being John Cotton, who sailed to America on the same ship with Hooker. Hooker was not only a ready writer of sermons, but evidently a man of great organizing ability. He was pastor at Newton, now Cambridge, Mass., but in 1636 he removed with one hundred others to found a new settlement in what is now Hartford, Conn. Hooker is the true pioneer of the colony of Connecticut. Moreover, in 1869[??], Hooker went with Governor Haynes to an important consultation with Governor Winthrop, out of which came the first American union, the United Colonies of New England. Hooker died in 1647.