From the parent settleme lish not only rapidly advanced into the whole surrounding country, but in the course of a few years sent colonizing parties to quite remote

EARLIEST

SETTLERS

localities; and wherever an English advance colony gained a foothold, there permanent and energetic settlement was certain very speedily to follow. As early as 1633 a number of Englishmen from Massachusetts, desiring to investigate the Indian stories of a better soil to the south, came and established themselves in the Connecticut Valley. Shortly afterward a patent for this region was obtained from the British crown by Lord Say and Seal, Lord Brook, and others. In 163G John TV inthrop, son of Governor Winthrop, settled on the Connecticut with a goodly company; and in 1638 Theophilus Eaton, with the noted Rev. John Davenport, led a large band of settlers to the same locality, planting the New Haven colony. Rhode Island was brought under settlement also at that period by Roger Williams and other dissidents from the intolerant religions institutions of Massachusetts. Now, the Euglish, in establishing important and flourishing settlements throughout Connecticut and Rhode Island, were, technically speaking, not in advance of the Dutch. The Dutch were the undisputed first discoverers of the entire Connecticut and Rhode Island coastline, along which the intrepid navigator Block sailed in 1614. Later, Dutch voyagers returned to those shores and trafficked with the natives; and finally, in 1623, when Director May arrived in New York harbor on his mission of colonization from the West India Company, he dispatched a number of his Walloon families to the mouth of the Connecticut River. At the same place the arms of the States( General of the Netherlands were formally erected in 1632, and in 1633 Director-General Van Twiller bought from the Indians a tract of land called Connittelsock, situated on the western Connecticut bank, on which tract, at a point sixty miles above the mouth of the stream, a Dutch fort and trading-house, named Good Hope, were built.