Fort Hoop

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Coordinates: 41°46′N 72°40′W / 41.76°N 72.67°W / 41.76; -72.67

Fort Hoop (Dutch: Fort Huys de Goede Hoop) was a settlement in the seventeenth century colonial province of New Netherland that eventually developed into Hartford, Connecticut.

History

In 1623, the Geoctroyeerde West-indische Compagnie (WIC), commonly known in English as the Dutch West India Company 1621–1793 of the United Netherlands Dutch Republic built a fortified trading house of the Roman Castra design with a praetorium, castra ways, and gates. Fort Hoop was located on the south bank of the Little River (now Park River), a tributary river of the Versche or Fresh River (now the Connecticut River). The directors at Fort Orange (now Albany) and Fort Amsterdam (now New York City) had planned Fort Hoop to be the northeastern fortification and trading center of the GWC. Peter Minuit, Governor of the New Netherland, did not follow the line of building fortifications as in Roman design, possibly out of haste & lack of resources, poor leadership, or a combination of both.

The land on which Fort Huys de Goede Hoop was situated was part of a larger tract purchased on 8 June 1633, by Jacob van Curler on behalf of the company from the Sequins, one of the clans of Connecticut Indians.[1]

Curler added a block house and palisade to the post while New Amsterdam sent a small garrison and a pair of cannons. Because of a perceived violation of an agreement, the Dutch seized the principal Pequot sachem Tatobem. They paid the Dutch a large ransom and received Tatobem's murdered body in return. Tatobem's successor was Sassacus.

The fort was commended by 1654 by the settlers to New England. English settlers from other New England colonies moved into the Connecticut Valley in the 1630s. In 1633, William Holmes led a group of settlers from Plymouth Colony to the Connecticut Valley, where they established Windsor, a few miles north of the Dutch trading post. In 1634, John Oldham and a handful of Massachusetts families built temporary houses in the area of Wethersfield, a few miles south of the Dutch outpost. In the next two years, thirty families from Watertown, Massachusetts joined Oldham's followers at Wethersfield. The English population of the area exploded in 1636 when clergyman Thomas Hooker led 100 settlers, including Richard Risley, with 130 head of cattle in a trek from Newtown (now Cambridge) in the Massachusetts Bay Colony to the banks of the Connecticut River, where they established Hartford directly across the Park River from the old Dutch fort. In 1637, the three Connecticut River towns—Windsor, Hartford, and Wethersfield—set up a collective government in order to fight the Pequot War.

The location of this confluence of rivers is at contemporary Sheldon Street in Hartford. The fort is recalled today with a nearby avenue called Huyshope,[2] once the center of economic activity in the city.[3]

See also

References

Notes

  1. ↑ Ruttenber, E.M. (2001). Indian Tribes of Hudson's River (3rd ed.). Hope Farm Press. ISBN 0-910746-98-2. 
  2. ↑ Shorto, Russell (2004). The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony that Shaped America. New York: Random House. ISBN 1-4000-7867-9. 
  3. ↑ study ¨

External links

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