SHOPPING
The Connecticut River Artisans Cooperative, Chester, features one-of-a-kind art and craft pieces including clothing, folk art, furniture, jewelry, paintings, photographs and pottery. The shop is open 10 am to 5 pm daily except Monday and Tuesday; from January to mid- March, it's open Friday through Sunday. Connecticut Coast Connecticut's coastline on Long Island Sound is long and varied. The western coast is crowded with industrial and commercial cities and suburban bedroom communities, all within the magnetic influence of New York City. The central coast, from New Haven to the mouth of the Connecticut River, is less urban, with historic towns and villages.
The eastern coast includes New London and Groton, both important in naval history, and Mystic, where the Mystic Seaport Museum brings maritime history to life. Here are the most interesting points along the coast, from west to east. NEW HAVEN Although it is home to one of the USA's most prestigious universities, this is no mere 390 Connecticut Coast New Haven college town.
Both business and industry shipping, manufacturing, health care, telecommunications power New Haven's economy more than student dollars. As you roll into town along 1-91 or 1-95, New Haven appears bustling and muscularit's still an important port, as it has been since the 1630s. But at the city's center is a tranquil core: New Haven Green, decorated with graceful colonial churches and venerable Yale University. History The Puritan founders of New Haven established their colony in 1637-38 at a spot where the Quinnipiac and other small rivers enter Long Island Sound. The new town was to be no haven of religious freedom: This was a theocracy, so only believers could be citizens, and the Bible was the law. The strictness of religious law was softened somewhat in 1665 when New Haven reluctantly joined the larger province of Connecticut.
It served as joint provincial capital (along with Hartford) from 1701 to 1875, testifying to its prominence during that time. Its prominence first came from the town's port, but by the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Yankee ingenuity had made New Haven an important manufacturing city as well. In 1702, a collegiate school was founded in nearby Clinton by James Pierpont. It soon moved to Old Saybrook, and in 1717 went to New Haven in response to a generous grant of funds by Elihu Yale. In l718, the name was changed to Yale in honor of the benefactor. Re-chartered in 1745, Yale grew extensively during the following century, adding 73.
On July 2, 1839, the slave ship Amistad was sailing along the coast of Cuba with its 'cargo' of 55 Africans who had been abducted and forced into slavery. One of the captives, known to history as Joseph Cinque, managed to remove his shackles surreptitiously and led a rebellion of other captives against the European crew. The captain and cook were killed, but the mutineers spared the Spanish navigator so that he could guide the ship back to Sierra Leone for them. The navigator had other plans, however. Though he headed the ship eastward during the day when the sun's position made its course evident to the mutineers, at night he used the stars to head west, hoping to bring the ship to a port where he could get help. For two months the Amistad sailed back and forth, exhausting its supplies of food and water.
Finally it was sighted by a US Coast Guard ship, seized off Long Island and towed to New London, Connecticut. The Africans were accused of rebellion, transported to New Haven and imprisoned awaiting trial. The plight of the Amistad abductees became a cause célèbre among abolitionist forces in the state and the nation. A committee of concerned Christian abolitionists was formed to aid in their legal defense. The Amistad abductees' case went all the way to the US Supreme Court, and former President John Quincy Adams was persuaded to emerge from retirement to plead their case. The court found that they had been abducted illegally and therefore could not be held liable for mutiny when they sought their own freedom.
No comments:
Post a Comment