Hertfordshire enjoys plenty of historical connections with America thanks to our Pilgrim ancestors who set sail across the Atlantic more than 400 years ago in search of a new life and a new world.
Today there is a St Albans city in Vermont, a town called Ware in Massachusetts and a city named Hartford in the state of Connecticut, which despite being some 3,377 miles away, was named in honour of Hertfordshire’s very own County Town.
Fans of the 1990s TV series Judging Amy will recognise Hartford, Connecticut because the legal drama starring Amy Brenneman and Tyne Daly, was set and filmed there. The series often highlighted the glorious autumnal colours of the New England city which over the centuries has been the home and or birthplace of a string of notable people including Hollywood legend Katherine Hepburn, author Mark Twain and American financier JP Morgan.
One of the oldest cities in America, Hartford today has a population of 120,000, dwarfing its British namesake which has population of just 30,000 people. Hertford’s links with Hartford in America are entirely due to an English preacher called Samuel Stone who co-founded the then small Puritan settlement, in the year 1636.
For context, this was around 15 years after the Mayflower ship had landed at Plymouth Rock, bringing some of the earliest Pilgrim settlers from England over to America and 50 years or so before the infamous Salem witch trials would take place in the neighbouring state of Massachusetts.
Samuel Stone had been born In Hertford (then spelt Hartford) in July of 1602. His family lived on Fore Street in the early years of the 17th century. He was the third son of John and Sarah Stone and was baptised at All Saints Church.
In 1617, Samuel became one of the first pupils to enrol at the nearby grammar school, founded by wealthy London merchant Richard Hale.
In 1620, Samuel left school to study theology at Emmanuel College in Cambridge, and in 1626, he was ordained at Peterborough. A year later, he became a curate at the parish church in Stisted in Essex, where he lived with wife Hope and their daughter Sarah.
But the Rev Stone wasn’t content with life in the Home Counties. He yearned to start a new life on the other side of the world where he would be free to build a haven for Puritan followers just like the first swathe of Pilgrims had done.
In 1633 Stone was among a group of 200 passengers who set off to America on board the 300-tonne ship, The Griffin. Just like the Mayflower, where a baby was born during the epic voyage and subsequently named Oceanus Hopkins, this eventful journey saw the birth of at least one child who was named ‘Seaborn’ Cotton.
Onboard the ship were other Pilgrim zealots including Thomas Hooker – a close friend of Stone’s from his Cambridge years- as well as well-known Puritan minister John Cotton. These men all believed that the Church of England should be simplified and stripped of its ornaments and music. They rejected the mystique and spectacle of the Roman Catholic Mass and didn’t believe the Reformation and rise of Protestantism had gone far enough in England. They wanted to be free to form their own Puritan churches across the pond where followers would lead pious and devout lives.
The Griffin docked in Boston in September of 1633. Samuel Stone and his friends Cotton and Hooker initially settled in New Towne, where Hooker acted as pastor with Stone working as his assistant teacher. In 1638, the growing city of New Towne was renamed Cambridge in honour of the English university city. Today it is home to Harvard University and the renowned Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Cotton and Hooker frequently had opposing views when it came to religion. Hooker argued for more inclusive membership of the church while Cotton called for more restrictive elements to the church.
After a reported argument with Cotton and some other settlers Samuel Stone and Hooker decided to move on to form a new settlement of their own. They set off westwards in 1636 with around 100 colonists and livestock cattle- intent on carving out their own future.
The pair took their followers to a place the Indians called ‘Suckiaug’. According to the Connecticut State Historian Walter W Woodward, Stone had led an advance contingent to the area the year before so it’s likely he considered this an ideal spot to build a new settlement.
It was named ‘Hartford’ by Stone after his hometown back in England. The Rev Thomas Hooker, originally from Leicestershire, was a real character. He was even more of a firebrand Puritan than Stone and would come to be known as the ‘Father of Connecticut’.
Hooker was always the big wig in the partnership, and we might wonder why he didn’t name the fledgling town, however it was Stone who had negotiated the purchase of the land from its Native American owners, so most likely why he got to choose the name of the settlement.
On May 31, 1638, Hooker delivered a sermon containing his vision of how the recently named Hartford should govern itself. "The foundation of authority is laid, firstly, in the free consent of the people," he said. He went on to argue that the "choice of public magistrates belongs unto the people by God's own allowance."
Religion was an integral part of the settlers lives and during the formative years of Hartford as a village, then town, Stone and Hooker were more open to allowing in newcomers than some of their neighbours, however as Woodward described, that doesn’t mean it was always a haven of tolerance: 'The Puritans of Connecticut were not advocates of religious freedom for all,' he said. 'Far from it. Quakers, though allowed to live, were still run out of the colony, and in the early 1660s Hartford hanged more than its fair share of witches. And as Connecticut grew, people still managed to squabble over the details of Puritan practice with almost as much fervour as their cousins to the north.'
Hooker died in 1647 after succumbing to one of the several epidemics of disease (possibly smallpox) that killed many of the Puritan colonists as well as many native Indians.
After the death of his friend Stone stepped into his shoes and became Hartford’s second minister of the first Church of Christ in Hartford. Samuel’s wife Hope had also died of illness in 1640 and he remarried a woman named Elizabeth. The couple had two daughters Rebecca and Mary and Stone had at least two children from his first marriage.
Samuel Stone died in July of 1663 aged 61 and was laid to rest at the Ancient Burying Ground in Hartford.
In 2005 a 1,000lb bronze statue of Stone was unveiled outside the graveyard just yards from where his remains were buried. Several Hertfordshire residents travelled all the way to America for the event. The sculpture matched an identical statue of Stone, which had been designed by Henry Tebbutt from Hertfordshire University and erected at Mill Bridge in Herford ( near the town theatre) in 1999. Both statues remain today and as for the city Stone co-founded, Hartford in America, grew into an important river port with a thriving merchant district.
Today Herford in Hertfordshire is twinned with its New England namesake and the American city uses a Stag on its seal. They also adopted the Hertford stag – or hart – on the emblem of their new town as a permanent reminder of a place in England where their founding father was born.
