There is no State university. The chief higher educational institutions are Yale University, non-sectarian, though historically affiliated with the Congregationalists; Wesleyan University (Methodist Episcopal), at Middletown, for both sexes: Trinity College (Protestant Episcopal), at Hartford. Schools of science, law, art, and medicine form departments of Yale University. The Congregationalists have divinity schools at New Haven and Hartford; the Protestant Episcopalians, one at Middletown; and the Baptists, a literary institute at Suffield. There are an agricultural college at Mansfield and training schools for nurses at Hartford and New Haven.
Charitable and Penal Institutions. The State has a large number of charitable and penal institutions. The humane institutions alone cost in 1900 $365,000, and the correctional institutions and soldiers' homes, over $300,000, the combined amounts being much greater than the amount which the State government annually expends upon the public schools. There are a State prison at Wethersfield; an industrial school for girls at Middletown; a school for boys at Meriden; a hospital for the insane at Middletown; a school for imbeciles at Lakeville; a retreat for the insane at Hartford; and Fitches home for soldiers at Noroton. Besides these, there are 10 private sanatoriums for nervous and mental diseases; 2 institutions for the deaf; 1 institution for the blind; 21 hospitals, 8 county temporary homes, 16 homes for the aged, and 16 children's homes. In general, Connecticut has assumed an enlightened and progressive policy in the administration of her charitable and correctional affairs. There is a State Board of Charities, consisting of five members, appointed by the Governor for a term of four years. Its powers are largely advisory, being authorized to visit and inspect all institutions, public or private. It embodies some of the functions of a prison commission and of a lunacy commission, and may correct any abuses, providing that this is done in such a manner as not to conflict with any personal, corporate, or statutory rights. The members of the board receive no remuneration; their actual expenses are paid. The policy has been adopted of placing in private families children committed to the reformatory schools, as well as orphans. The State has no reformatory for cases of ‘first offense’ committed between the ages of sixteen and thirty.
Religion. Connecticut was in its early days a refuge for the English Nonconformists, and soon became a Puritanical stronghold. For a long time the Congregational Church had almost the entire field to itself. The Unitarian movement made less progress in Connecticut than in other New England States. With the emigration to Western States of large numbers of the descendants of the original Colonial stock and the incoming of large numbers of foreigners—especially Irish and French-Canadian—a still greater religious change has taken place, and the Catholic Church now numbers more than half of the church-membership of the State.
History. In 1614 Adrian Block, a native of Holland, discovered and explored the Connecticut River, but it was not till 1633 that the Dutch of New Amsterdam began a trading post at Suckiaug (Hartford). Two years earlier the soil from Narragansett Bay to the Pacific Ocean was granted by the Earl of Warwick to Lord Say and Sele, and others, but the transfer apparently had no legal basis. In 1633 traders from Plymouth visited the site of Windsor. Wethersfield in 1634, and Windsor and Hartford in the following year, were settled by emigrants from Massachusetts Bay. In 1635 the Say and Sele patentees sent over John Winthrop, Jr., to act as Governor. He built a fort at Saybrook, preventing the Dutch from getting control of the Connecticut, and gave the settlers in the upper valley a conditional permission to remain. Desire for a more democratic government caused a new exodus from Massachusetts, and in 1636 Hartford, Windsor, and Wethersfield received their chief bodies of immigrants. In 1638-39 the three towns united in an independent commonwealth and adopted a thoroughly democratic constitution. The Massachusetts system of town government, transplanted to Connecticut, attained its fullest development in the three upper settlements, with which Springfield (Agawam) remained nominally associated till 1641. War with the Pequots, the most powerful of the Indian tribes, in 1637, led to their extermination, and the progress of colonization was never again hindered by the enmity of the natives. In 1638 New Haven was founded by a Puritan colony under the Rev. John Davenport, and from 1638 to 1640 Milford, Guilford, and Stamford on the mainland and Southold on Long Island were settled. Together with Branford these towns were united, between 1643 and 1651, into one ‘jurisdiction,’ known subsequently as the New Haven Colony, as opposed to the upper settlements, which constituted the Connecticut Colony. The laws of the Old Testament were made the rule for all courts. A somewhat similar code of laws in Connecticut gave rise in after years to the nickname ‘blue laws’ (q.v.), although Connecticut, unlike New Haven, did not restrict the franchise and the holding of office to church members. In 1644 Connecticut bought the colony of Saybrook from Say and Sele, and gradually (1644-62), by purchase and colonization, acquired the greater part of the present State and a considerable portion of Long Island. In 1657 John Winthrop, Jr., was chosen Governor of Connecticut, and by his skill in diplomacy procured, in 1662, a charter from Charles II. granting absolute autonomy to that Colony. By this charter New Haven was incorporated with Connecticut, in spite of the most vehement opposition on the part of the former. New Haven, nevertheless, was forced to submit (1664). In October, 1687, Sir Edmund Andros came to Hartford and demanded the charter from the General Assembly, but it was carried away and secreted till 1689. (See Charter Oak.) From 1687 to 1689, however, the Colony was subject to the despotic rule of Andros. In 1708 the Congregational Church system was established by the adoption of the Saybrook platform, and this was supplemented by the Act of 1742. Though other denominations were tolerated. Church and State for a long time remained closely connected, and secular and religious affairs were under the control of the same authorities, in 1754 Connecticut bought from the Indians a large tract of land in the Wyoming Valley in Pennsylvania and proceeded to settle it, but was compelled in 1782 to surrender it to Pennsylvania. In 1786 the Colony relinquished its charter rights to the territory west of its present
