Detail from a stained glass window depicting Thomas Hooker, Center Church, Hartford, by Louis Comfort Tiffany, ca. 1900s.

Thomas Hooker (1586–1647)

Thomas Hooker was born in a small English village in 1586. He attended Emmanuel College at Cambridge University where he decided to become a minister. Opposition to his Puritan beliefs, however, encouraged Hooker to immigrate to America. In 1636, three years after his arrival in Boston, Hooker and one hundred members of his congregation headed south and founded a new colony on the site of modern-day Hartford, Connecticut. Two years later, one of Hooker’s sermons served as the inspiration for the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut which established civil government for the Colony of Connecticut. An influential preacher as well as civic leader, Hooker died during an epidemic in the summer of 1647.

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