Connecticut Colony
former colony in North America, part of Great Britain
The Connecticut Colony, originally known as the Connecticut River Colony, was an English colony in New England which became the state of Connecticut. It was organized on March 3, 1636 as a settlement for a Puritan congregation of settlers from the Massachusetts Bay Colony led by Thomas Hooker. The English secured their control of the region in the Pequot War. The colony eventually absorbed the neighboring New Haven and Saybrook colonies. It was part of the brief Dominion of New England. The colony's founding document was the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, which has been called the first written constitution of a democratic government, earning Connecticut the nickname "The Constitution State".
History
Prior to European settlement, the land that would become Connecticut was home to the Wappinger Confederacy along the western coast and the Niantics on the eastern coast. Further inland were the Pequot, who pushed the Niantic to the coast and would become the most important tribe in relations with colonists. Also present were the Nipmucs and Mohicans, though these two tribes largely lived in the neighboring states of Massachusetts and New York respectively. The first European to visit Connecticut was Dutch explorer Adriaen Block, who sailed up the Connecticut River with his yacht Onrust.
“Connecticut Colony” enters the record as former colony in North America, part of Great Britain. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Connecticut, Colony and former can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q951500. VIAF identifies the subject as 238515270. The Library of Congress control number is sh85031161. Authority coordinates are 41.718, -72.751. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1636.
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This entry incorporates text from “Connecticut Colony” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.