Page 38 - Curriculum Visions Dynamic Book

38
Connecticut
Hartford, the capital city of Connecticut
Named 1637 Incorporated 1784 Elevation 59 ft (18 m) Population 124,893 Metro 1,212,381
Hartford is the capital of Connecticut and Connecticut’s fourth-largest city after the coastal cities of Bridgeport, New Haven, and Stamford.
Before the arrival of the first European colonists, Native American Algonquian peoples had called this wooded area home for thousands of years. The area by the river was called as Suckiaug’, meaning “Black fertile silt, good for planting.”
The first Europeans to explore the area was the Dutchman Adriaen Block’s party in 1614. After his reports, in 1623 Dutch fur traders reaching out from their main settlement of New Amsterdam (modern New York City settled here).
The Dutch built a fort, Fort Goede Hoop (Good Hope) on the banks of the Connecticut River. By 1633, the fort had been reinforced by a garrison and cannon. The fort was abandoned by 1654, but its location is still remembered in the neighborhood called Dutch Point.
The Dutch were not alone in seeking to expand into Connecticut. In 1635, the English settled at what is now Hartford, close to the Dutch fort. Pastor Thomas Hooker and Governor John Haynes led 100 settlers with 130 head of cattle through the woodland from Newtown (now Cambridge, Massachusetts) which was part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. They named their new village Newtown, then changed it to Hartford in 1637 after the English town
of Hertford (pronounced Hartford in British English) just north of London.