Thomas Hooker's 1636 Migration to Connecticut

In 1636, Reverend Thomas Hooker led a group of about 100 Puritan congregants from the Massachusetts Bay Colony to the Connecticut River Valley. They were members of his Cambridge congregation seeking greater religious autonomy and land.

Dissatisfied with the rigid orthodoxy and limited suffrage in Massachusetts, they traveled overland with livestock and supplies, founding the towns of Hartford, Windsor, and Wethersfield. These settlements formed the nucleus of the Connecticut Colony, which adopted the Fundamental Orders (1639)—often called the first written constitution in America.