Posted
on January 9, 2016
Connecticut
became the fifth state to ratify the brand-new U.S. Constitution on
this date in 1788.
Two
years before becoming a state, Connecticut gave up its claim to lands
west to the Mississippi. I never even knew the colony of Connecticut
had ever claimed these lands! But apparently most of the British
colonies established on the east coast during the 1600s and the early
1700s were established by royal proclamation or charter – and their
northern and southern boundaries were often carefully defined; their
eastern boundaries, obviously, were established by the Atlantic Ocean
itself; but their western boundaries were a bit “iffy.”
Some
of the colonies had no western boundary defined at all.
But
some of the colonies were specifically set up as stretching “from
sea to sea.” (I'm not sure if anyone “got” that that would be
one heck of a long colony, stretching from the Atlantic to the
Pacific more than 2,000 miles!)
Whether
or not the western boundary of a particular colony was defined,
obviously the land was very much in dispute. You know that Native
Americans of many different groups lived in North America; also, any
one region was likely to be claimed by more than one colony and/or
European power.
I
truly thought that Connecticut, since it runs into New York – which
was settled by the Dutch in the very early 1600s and was conquered by
England in 1664, and therefore established as a British colony not
much more than two decades after Connecticut was founded – would
not be one of those colonies claiming western lands. However,
Connecticut DID lay claims to a Connecticut-sized strip of land all
the way to the Mississippi River. It settled a boundary dispute with
New York in 1683, gave up its claim to what is now the top half of
Pennsylvania in 1786, gave up lands stretching from Lake Erie to the
Mississippi River also in 1786, and finally ceded a bit that is now
Ohio in 1800!
Check
out these two maps to see what I'm talking about!
Learn more about Connecticut...
My
husband and I love to check out famous universities when we can. My
favorite university campus in the U.S., so far at least, is Yale University,
which is located in New Haven, Connecticut. If you want to do a
virtual tour of Yale, try this or this other video.
Also
on this date:
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out my Pinterest pages on:
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