Q 01/05

By legend, where did colonists hide Connecticut's royal charter in 1687 when Sir Edmund Andros came to seize it?

A) Under a church pulpit

B) Inside a tavern chimney

C) In a hollow oak tree

D) Beneath a mill wheel

Answer · why

C) In a hollow oak tree

In a hollow oak tree, the story goes, after the candles went out mid-meeting and the parchment vanished. The tree stood in Hartford until a storm fell...

Q 02/05

In 1647 Connecticut Colony hanged Alse Young in the American colonies' first recorded execution for which crime?

A) Blasphemy

B) Witchcraft

C) Horse theft

D) Treason

Answer · why

B) Witchcraft

Witchcraft sent Alse Young to the gallows 45 years before anyone was accused at Salem. Her daughter was accused of the same crime some thirty years la...

Q 03/05

Connecticut's 1662 royal charter set the colony's western boundary at which body of water?

A) The Pacific Ocean

B) The Mississippi River

C) The Great Lakes

D) The Hudson River

Answer · why

A) The Pacific Ocean

The Pacific Ocean, which the charter called the South Sea, lay across a continent no colonist had crossed. Connecticut gave up most of that sea-to-sea...

Q 04/05

Which minister led about a hundred settlers and their cattle overland from Massachusetts in 1636 to found Hartford?

A) Roger Williams

B) John Cotton

C) William Bradford

D) Thomas Hooker

Answer · why

D) Thomas Hooker

Thomas Hooker is now called the Father of Connecticut. His 1638 sermon arguing that the people should choose their own magistrates inspired the colony...

Q 05/05

Which 1639 document, often called the first written constitution, united Connecticut's three river towns?

A) The Fundamental Orders

B) The Mayflower Compact

C) The Massachusetts Body of Liberties

D) The Cambridge Platform

Answer · why

A) The Fundamental Orders

The Fundamental Orders never mention the king or the Crown, placing all authority in an elected general court. They are why Connecticut calls itself t...