Connecticut historical timeline

Origins

The Pequot, Mohegan and Quinnipiac peoples lived here before English settlers moved down from Massachusetts in the 1630s. The Pequot War of 1636-38 was among the most destructive early colonial conflicts in New England.

Turning points

The Fundamental Orders of 1639 set out a government deriving authority from the people rather than the crown, and the state's claim to be the Constitution State rests on them. Connecticut was the fifth state to ratify the federal Constitution in 1788.

Influential people

Eli Whitney built an arms factory here; Samuel Colt made Hartford a centre of firearms manufacture; and the brass mills and clock factories of the central valley made the state an industrial power far out of proportion to its size.

Cultural evolution

Mark Twain and Harriet Beecher Stowe were neighbours in Hartford in the 1870s and 1880s, and both houses survive. Twain wrote Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn in his.

Present-day significance

Manufacturing gave way to insurance and finance, and Connecticut now has the highest per-capita income in the country alongside some of its sharpest inequality between towns.