Family Card - Person Sheet
Family Card - Person Sheet
Misc. Notes
HOOKER, Thomas (1586?-1647) Hooker was a Congregationalist clergyman who, with a group of his parishioners, founded a colony in 1636 at what is now Hartford, Connecticut. He had been forced to flee England in 1630 because of his Puritan beliefs. After living in Holland, he migrated to Boston in 1633. Hooker and his friend Samuel Stone became pastor and teacher, respectively, of a church at New Towne (Cambridge) , Massachusetts. Although the church prospered, Hooker resented the autocratic rule of the Puritan magistrates. He sought permission to move elsewhere in the colony, but John Cotton persuaded the General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony to deny his request. Despite this, Hooker, Stone, and about 100 followers left and settled in Connecticut. An early exponent of democracy, Hooker wrote in a sermon in 1638 that "The privilege of election...belongs to the people,: and that the power of officeholders should have limits. "e; In 1639, these ideas were embodied in the first written colonial constitution, Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, which declared Connecticut an independent commonwealth. 466