56 THE FATHERS OF NEW ENGLAND

The early history of Rhode Island thus furnishes
a remarkable exhibition of intense individualism
in things religious and a warring of disruptive
forces in matters of civil organization.

Connecticut was settled during the years 1634
to 1636 by people from Massachusetts. Knowl-
edge of the fertile Connecticut valley had come
early to the Dutch, who had planted a block-house,
the House of Good Hope, at the southeast corner
of the land upon which Hartford now stands.
Plymouth, too, in searching for advantageous
trade openings had sent out one William Holmes,
who sailed past the Dutch fort and took possession
of the site of Windsor. In the autumn of 1634
a certain John Oldham, trader and rover and
frequent disturber of the Puritan peace, came with
a few companions and began to occupy and cul-
tivate lands within the bounds of modern Weth-
ersfield. Settlers continued to arrive from
Massachusetts, either by land or by water, act-
uated by land-hunger and stirred to movement
westward by the same driving impulse that for
years to come was to populate the frontier wherever
it stretched. The territory thus possessed was
claimed at first by Massachusetts, on the theory
that the southern line of the colony, if ex-