This book is dedicated to the school children of the state by the Connecticut Society of the Colonial Dames of America...

The Colonial Dames of Connecticut, under whose auspices this book is published, desire to express their indebtedness to Professor Charles M. Andrews, of Yale University, who generously offered to supervise the work on its historical side. They also gratefully acknowledge help from many friends in the preparation of the volume. Thanks are due to Mrs. Charles G. Morris for criticism of the manuscript and to Mr. George Dudley Seymour for advice in the selection of the illustrations. Courtesies have

It is a pleasure to write a few words of introduction to this collection of stories dealing with the early history of Connecticut, a state that can justly point with pride to a past rich in features of life and government that have been influential in the making of the nation. Yet the history of the colony was not dramatic, for its people lived quiet lives, little disturbed by quarrels among themselves or by serious difficulties with the world outside. The land was never thickly settled; few for

The two Indian chiefs of whom we hear most in the early history of Connecticut were Uncas, sachem of the Mohegans, and Miantonomo, sachem of the Narragansetts. A great Indian battle called the “Battle of the Plain” took place once, near Norwich, between these rival tribes led by these two rival chieftains. The Mohegans were a part of the Pequot tribe, and the Pequots, or “Gray Foxes,” were the fiercest, most cruel, and warlike of all the Indians who roamed through the forests of Connecticut befo

“It hath a fair river, fit for harboring of ships, and abounds with rich and goodly meadows.” This description of New Haven, or Quinnipiac, as the Indians called it, was brought back to Boston in the summer of 1637, after the Pequot War, by some of the English soldiers who had pursued the flying Pequots into that part of Connecticut and had noticed the good harbor of New Haven as they passed. The report sounded so pleasant and so satisfactory in the ears of a company of London merchants, who, wi

In the year 1661, when the city of New Haven was a small village not much more than twenty years old, a family of boys named Sperry lived out on a farm some two or three miles west of that settlement. There was only one house then besides theirs outside the town in that direction and the woods all about were thick and wild. That summer something mysterious was going on near the Sperry farm. Every morning Richard Sperry himself, or one of his boys, carried food, in dishes covered with a cloth, in

A boy named Lion Gardiner was born in England in 1599, toward the end of the reign of Queen Elizabeth. He was strong, active, and energetic, and as he grew up he was trained to be an engineer. Like a good many other ambitious young Englishmen of his day, he took service in the Low Countries,—­that is, in what is now Holland and Belgium,—­where the people were fighting against Spain for their independence. He was employed as “an engineer and master of works of fortification in the legers [camps]

Once, in the days of Indian attacks on the small English settlements in Connecticut, a family of children had a narrow escape from capture by the savages. A party of Indians on the warpath passed near their home while their father and elder brothers were away working in the fields with the neighbors. It was the custom in those dangerous times for men to work together in companies, going from one man’s fields and meadows to another’s, and for greater safety they carried their firearms with them.

One day, long ago, some boys were out bird-nesting. They saw a nest they wanted high up in a tree and far out on a limb, in a hard position to reach, One of the boldest of them climbed the tree to try to get it, but a branch broke with him and he fell. A lower projecting limb caught his clothes, and he hung there head down, arms and legs dangling helplessly. He could not climb back and he could not drop down, because he could not get free. The other boys below looked up, terrified, for the limb

In the Museum of the New York Historical Society there is a large flat stone with an inscription cut into one side of it, and in the other, three deep holes for three legs of a horse. Lying on a table near it are several large pieces of heavy metal with the old gilding almost worn off. One piece looks like the tail of a horse and another like a part of his saddle. These fragments of metal and the stone slab are nearly all that is left of a statue of King George the Third on horseback that stood

“Attend all ye villains that live in the state, Consider the walls that encircle Newgate.” Newgate is the name of a famous prison in London. It is called “Newgate” because it was first built, centuries ago, over a new gate in the wall of the city. Later, when these rooms over the gate became too crowded, a larger prison was built near by and called by the same name. There was once a Newgate prison in Connecticut. It was named for the old English one, but, instead of being up over a gate, it was

“’T was on a May-day of the far old year Seventeen hundred eighty, that there fell Over the bloom and sweet life of the spring, Over the fresh earth and the heaven of noon, A horror of great darkness, like the night.” WHITTIER. “Yellow Friday,” or “the Dark Day,” in New England, was the l9th of May, 1780. For nearly a week before this day the air had been full of smoke and haze, and the sun at noontime and the full moon at night had looked like great red balls in the misty sky. Thursday night th

On the Green of the old town of Lebanon a mound is shown to-day on the spot where a large brick oven stood in the winter of 1781—­an oven in which bread was baked for the soldiers of the American Revolutionary Army. These soldiers, who might have been seen almost any day that winter in their gay uniforms, crossing and recrossing the Green, or gathered in groups about the oven, were, strangely enough, not American soldiers, but French hussars belonging to the Duke de Lauzun’s famous “Legion of Ho

“To drum-beat and heart-beat A soldier marches by; There is color in his cheek, There is courage in his eye, Yet to drum-beat and heart-beat In a moment he must die.” The story of Nathan Hale is the story of a short life and a brave death. Connecticut has written his name on her Roll of Honor—­the name of a man who was executed as a spy in the War of the Revolution. He was born in Coventry, Tolland County, on the 6th of June, 1755. His father, Deacon Richard Hale, who, as well as his mother, Eli

By an unknown poet of 1776 The breezes went steadily thro’ the tall pines, A-saying “oh, hu-sh!” a-saying “oh, hu-sh!” As stilly stole by a bold legion of horse, For Hale in the bush; for Hale in the bush. “Keep still!” said the thrush as she nestled her young, In a nest by the road; in a nest by the road; “For the tyrants are near, and with them appear, What bodes us no good; what bodes us no good.” The brave captain heard it, and thought of his home, In a cot by the brook; in a cot by the broo