Nickname:
Constitution State (official, 1959); Nutmeg State
Origin of name:
From an Indian word (Quinnehtukqut) meaning
“beside the long tidal river”
10 largest cities (2005 est.):
Bridgeport, 139,008
New Haven, 124,791
Hartford, 124,397
Stamford, 120,045
Waterbury, 107,902
Norwalk, 84,437
Danbury, 78,736
New Britain, 71,254
Bristol, 61,353
Meriden, 59,653
Land area: 4,844 sq mi. (12,545 sq km)
Geographic center: In Hartford Co., at East Berlin
Number of counties: 8
Largest county by population and area:
Fairfield, 902,775 (2005); Litchfield, 920 sq mi.
State forests: 94 (170,000 ac.)
State parks: 94 (32,960 ac.)
Residents: Connecticuter; Nutmegger
2005 resident population est.: 3,510,297
2000 resident census population (rank):
3,405,565 (29).
Male: 1,649,319 (48.4%);
Female: 1,756,246 (51.6%).
White: 2,780,355 (81.6%);
Black: 309,843 (9.1%);
American Indian: 9,639 (0.3%);
Asian: 82,313 (2.4%);
Other race: 147,201 (4.3%);
Two or more races: 74,848 (2.2%);
Hispanic/Latino: 320,323 (9.4%).
2000 percent population 18 and over: 75.3; 65
and over: 13.8; median age: 37.4.
Connecticut
History
Connecticut began as three distinct settlements, referred to at the time as 'Colonies' or 'Plantations'. These ventures gradually were finally combined under a single royal charter in 1662. Thomas Hooker and his congregation left Massachusetts because of religious differences and established Connecticut in 1639.
Various Algonquian tribes inhabited the area prior to European settlement. The Dutch were the first Europeans in Connecticut. In 1614 Adriaen Block explored the coast of Long Island Sound, and sailed up the Connecticut River at least as far as the confluence of the Park River, site of modern Hartford, Connecticut. By 1623, the new Dutch West India Company regularly traded for furs there and ten years later they fortified it for protection from the Pequot Indians as well as from the expanding English colonies. They fortified the site, which was named "House of Hope" (also identified as "Fort Hoop", "Good Hope" and "Hope"), but encroaching English colonization made them agree to withdraw in the Treaty of Hartford, and by 1654 they were gone.
The first English colonists came from the Bay Colony and Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts, and they settled at Windsor in 1633, Wethersfield (1634), and, led by Thomas Hooker, Hartford (1636). The Bay colony also built Fort Saybrook at the mouth of the River in 1636. Another Puritan group started the New Haven Colony in 1637. The Massachusetts colonies did not seek to absorb their progeny in Connecticut and Rhode Island into the Massachusetts governments. Communication and travel was too difficult, and it was also convenient to have a place for nonconformists to go.
The English settlement and trading post at Windsor especially threatened the Dutch trade, since it was upriver and more accessible to the Indians from the interior. That fall and winter the Dutch sent a party upriver as far as modern Springfield, Massachusetts spreading gifts to convince the Indians to bring their trade to the Dutch post at Hartford. Unfortunately, they also spread smallpox and, by the end of the 1633-34 winter, the Indian population of the entire valley was reduced from over 8,000 to less than 2,000. This left the fertile valley wide open to further settlement.
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