Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III SETTLEMENT CONCLUDED FIVE years after the colonists began to build their log houses on the Connecticut, another settlement started on the Sound at Quinnipiac, or New Haven, under the leadership of Theophilus Eaton, Edward Hopkins, John Davenport, and several other well-to-do and most serious men. Massachusetts authorities made every effort to persuade these desirable emigrants to tarry there; Charlestown making them large offers, and Newbury proposing to give up the whole town to them; the General Court promising them any place they might choose. But this friendliness did not persuade them, and after a stay of nine months, they chose to have a colony after their own ideas. Resulting from the Pequot war was the discovery of land west of Say- brook, and in the autumn of 1637, Theophilus Eaton and others explored the region; so well pleased were they that in March, 1638, a company settled at New Haven, and on April 18, they kept their first Sunday there, gathering under an oak to listen to John Davenport, their minister. A leading reason for the settlement was to be away from the general government of New England should there be any, and also because there were so many able men in office in Massachusetts that newcomers had scanty opportunity to build a state after their own ideas. On reaching New Haven, the wealthy leaders, accustomed to elegant housesin London, put up elaborate homes; Governor Eaton built one on Elm Street, large enough to contain nineteen fireplaces, and Davenport's opposite is said to have had thirteen fireplaces. Determined to establish the colony according to the Scriptures, a meeting was called soon after the arrival, and at the close of a day of fasting and prayer they made a Plantation Covenant, in which they solemnly bound the...