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Two other English colonies in the present area of the in 1644; New Haven Colony in 1665. HISTORY The first Europe ans to the area the members of the expedition of Dutch explorer Adriaen Block , who sailed through Long Island Sound and up the Connecticut River to present-day Hartford , encountering the Pequot people who lived in area. By the 1620s, Dutch traders from New Amsterdam established Fur Trading posts along the Connecticut River. Thomas Hooker, along with some Massachusetts colonists, were the first to go to the Connecticut colony for more freedom and financial opportunities. The rival English had simultaneously established the Massachusetts Bay Colony . King James I of England granted the Earl Of Warwick , president of the Council For New England , the right to settle the area west of Narragansett Bay to the Pacific Ocean . In 1631, the Earl of Warwick conveyed the grant to 15 Puritan lords in England as refuge in North America in case the Puritan Revolution failed. The patentees included William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye And Sele , as well as Lord Brooke , and Colonel George Fenwick . In 1635, the patentees commissioned John Winthrop, Jr. , son of the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, as "Governor of River Colony". Winthrop arrived in Boston in October 1635 and learned that the Dutch were planning to occupy the mouth of the Connecticut River at a place called ''Pasbeshauke'', meaning "place at the mouth of the river" in the Algonquian language. To counter the Dutch, Winthrop sent a small bark (canoe) to the mouth of the Connecticut with 20 Carpenter s and other workmen under the leadership of Lieutenant Edward Gibbons and Sergeant Simon Willard. The expedition landed near the mouth of the river, on the west bank in present-day Old Saybrook , on November 24, 1635 and located the Dutch coat of arms nailed on a tree. They tore down the coat of arms and replaced it with a shield painted with a grinning face. They established a battery of Cannon and built a small fort. When the Dutch ship returned several days later, they sighted the cannon and the English ships and withdrew. Winthrop renamed the point "Point Sayebrooke" in honor of Fiennes (Viscount Saye) and Lord Brooke. The first English settlers arrived in 1636. Clergyman Thomas Hooker led 100 settlers with 130 head of cattle in a trek from Newtown (now Cambridge ) in the Massachusetts Bay Colony and started their settlement just north of the old Dutch fort at Hartford. In 1637, the three Connecticut River towns ( Hartford , Weathersfield , and Windsor ) set up a collective government in order to fight the Pequot War. In the Summer of 1638, the towns drew up their Fundamental Orders , setting out the principles, powers, and structure of the government. These were adopted by the Connecticut council on January 14, 1639. The Connecticut Colony received a royal charter in 1662 and became an official Crown Colony . The New Haven Colony was a separate entity; it was merged into the Connecticut Colony in January 5, 1665. SEE ALSO EXTERNAL LINKS
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