Gravestones of the Lawence family, Old Burying Ground, Hartford – Connecticut Historical Society
Diverse communities of belief have shaped the state’s politics, civic life and even the formation of its earliest towns. Iconic white-steepled meeting houses, many from the 1800s or earlier, speak to Connecticut’s settlement by Congregationalist believers and a lengthy period of entwined political and spiritual authority. Calls for expanded toleration, sometimes in the face of violent opposition, have a long history, too: from Baptists and Shakers in the 1700s to African Americans and, in the immigration waves of the 1800s, Jews, Catholics, and others. Such groups founded some of the state’s oldest and best-known hospitals, universities, and philanthropic organizations. Today, diverse beliefs continue to enrich Connecticut’s cultural and spiritual landscape.
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Tradition and Transformation Define Hartford’s Jewish Community
From the mid-1800s to the present, Jews have called Connecticut’s capital city home and enriched it with their cultural traditions and civic spirit. …[more]
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Websites
Cornwall Historical Society. “Foreign Mission School 1817-1826 - Online Exhibit,” 2017.
Connecticut State Library. “Research Guide to Colonial Witchcraft Trial Materials,” 2016. Link.
Yale University. “The Jonathan Edwards Center,” 2012. Link.
Places
“Cedar Hill Cemetery,” 2016. Link.
“Grove Street Cemetery,” 2016. Link.
Books
Meyer, Freeman, and American Revolution Bicentennial Commission of Connecticut. Connecticut Congregationalism in the Revolutionary Era. Hartford: American Revolution Bicentennial Commission of Connecticut, 1977.
Boynton, Cynthia Wolf. Connecticut Witch Trials: The First Panic in the New World. Charleson, SC: The History Press, 2014.
Essig, James D. The Bonds of Wickedness: American Evangelicals Against Slavery, 1770-1808. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1982.
Greene, M. Louise. The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut. New York: Da Capo Press, 1970.
Cornwall Historical Society, and Paul Chamberlain. The Foreign Mission School. Cornwall, CT: Cornwall Historical Society Inc., 1968.
Kidd, Thomas S. The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007.
Keller, Charles Roy. The Second Great Awakening in Connecticut. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1942.
Taylor, John M. The Witchcraft Delusion in Colonial Connecticut, 1647-1697. New York, NY: Grafton Press, 1908. Link.
Hinks, Peter. “Timothy Dwight, Congregationalism, and Early Antislavery.” In The Problem of Evil: Slavery, Freedom, and the Ambiguities of American Reform. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2007.
