Produced by Charlene Taylor, Bryan Ness, Carol Brown and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Books project.) Transcriber’s Note: This text includes characters that require UTF-8 (Unicode) file encoding. If the œ (oe ligature) does not display properly or if the apostrophes and quotation marks appear as garbage, make sure your text reader’s “character set” or “file encoding” is set to Unicode (UTF-8). You may also need to change the default font. Additional notes are at the end of the book. THE REV. SAMUEL PETERS’ LL. D. GENERAL HISTORY OF CONNECTICUT, FROM ITS FIRST SETTLEMENT UNDER GEORGE FENWICK TO ITS LATEST PERIOD OF AMITY WITH GREAT BRITAIN PRIOR TO THE REVOLUTION; INCLUDING _A DESCRIPTION OF THE COUNTRY, AND MANY CURIOUS AND INTERESTING ANECDOTES_. WITH AN APPENDIX, POINTING OUT THE CAUSES OF THE REBELLION IN AMERICA; TOGETHER WITH THE PARTICULAR PART TAKEN BY THE PEOPLE OF CONNECTICUT IN ITS PROMOTION. BY A GENTLEMAN OF THE PROVINCE. LONDON: 1781. TO WHICH ARE ADDED, ADDITIONS TO APPENDIX, NOTES, AND EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS, VERIFYING MANY IMPORTANT STATEMENTS MADE BY THE AUTHOR. BY SAMUEL JARVIS McCORMICK. NEW YORK: D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 549 & 551 BROADWAY. 1877. COPYRIGHT BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 1877. PREFACE. Though Connecticut be the most flourishing, and, proportionally, the most populous, province in North America, it has hitherto found no writer to introduce it, in its own right, to the notice of the world. Slight and cursory mention in the accounts of other provinces, or of America in general, has yet only been made of it. The historians of New England have constantly endeavored to aggrandize Massachusetts Bay as the parent of the other colonies, and as comprehending all that is worthy of attention in that country. Thus Governor Hutchinson says, in the preface of his history of that province, that “there was no importation of planters from England to any part of the continent northward of Maryland, excepting to Massachusetts, for more than fifty years after the colony began;” not knowing, or willing to forget, or to conceal, that Saybrook, New Haven, and Long Island, were settled with emigrants from England within half that period. Another reason for the obscurity in which the Connectitensians have hitherto been involved is to be found among their own sinister views and purposes: Prudence dictated that their deficiency in point of right to the soil they occupied, their wanton and barbarous persecutions, illegal practices, daring usurpations, etc., had better be concealed than exposed to public view.