Until this time there had been only a garrison of about twenty men in the place. They had made some small improvements in the lands, and erected a few buildings in the vicinity of the fort; but there had been no settlement of a plantation with civil privileges. But about midsummer Mr. George Fenwick, with his lady and family, arrived in a ship of two hundred and fifty tons; another ship came in company with him. They were both for Qunnipiack.
Mr. Fenwick and others came over with the view to take possession of a large tract upon the river in behalf of their lordships, the original patentees, and to plant a town at the mouth of the river. A settlement was soon made, and named Saybrook, in honor of their lordships, Say and Seal, and Brook.
Mr. Fenwick, Mr. Thomas Peters, who was the first minister in the plantation, Captain Gardiner, Thomas Leffingwell, Thomas Tracy, and Captain John Mason, were some of the principal planters.
[7] In July, 1638, Mr. Winslow and Mr. Bradford, therefore, made a journey to Boston to confer with Governor Winthrop and his Council on the subject. Governor Winslow and Mr. Bradford proposed to them to join with Plymouth in a trade to Connecticut for hemp and beaver, and to erect a house for the purpose of commerce. It was represented as necessary to prevent the Dutch from taking possession of that fine country, who, it was reported, were about to build upon the river. But Governor Winthrop declined the motion; he considered it was not proper to make a plantation there, because there were three or four thousand warlike Indians upon the river, and small pinnaces only could enter at high water; also, because that seven months in the year no vessels could go into it, by reason of the ice and the violence of the stream.
The Plymouth people, therefore, determined to undertake the enterprise at their own risk. Preparations were made for erecting a trading-house and establishing a small company on the river. In the mean time, the master of a vessel from Massachusetts, who was trading at New Netherlands, showed to Walter Van Twiller, the Dutch Governor, the commission which the English had to trade and settle in New England, and that his Majesty the King of England had granted all these parts to his own subjects. He, therefore, desired that the Dutch would not build at Connecticut.
This appears to have been done at the direction of Governor Winthrop, for, in consequence of it, the Dutch Governor wrote a very complaisant letter to him, in which he represented that the lords, the States-General, had granted the same country to the West India Company. He requested, therefore that the English would make no settlements in Connecticut until the affair should be determined between the court of England and the States-General.
This appears to have been a piece of policy in the Dutch Governor to keep the English still until the Dutch had got a firm footing upon the river.
Several vessels this year went to Connecticut River to trade. John Oldham, from Dorchester, and three men with him, also traveled through the wilderness to Connecticut, to view the country and trade with the Indians. The sachem upon the river made him most welcome, and gave him a present in beaver. He found that the Indian hemp grew spontaneously in the meadows in great abundance. He purchased a quantity of it, and upon trial it appeared much to exceed the hemp which was grown in England.
William Holmes, of Portsmouth, with his company, having prepared the frame of a house, with boards, and materials for covering it immediately, put them on board of a vessel and sailed for Connecticut. Holmes had a commission from the Governor of Plymouth and a chosen company to accomplish his design.
When he came into the river he found that the Dutch had got in before him, made a light fort, and planted two pieces of cannon: this was erected at the place called Hartford.