New Haven, Connecticut

City: New Haven

County: New Haven

State: Connecticut

Lat/Long: 41.3000, -72.9167

New Haven, Connecticut is a city in southern Connecticut. Situated on New Haven Harbor, thirty-six miles southwest of Hartford, New Haven had its origins in the migration of Puritans from the Massachusetts Bay Colony to the Connecticut Valley. In 1638, a group of Puritans led by John Davenport and Theophilus Eaton arrived and built a settlement, which they named Quinnipiac. The village bore that name until 1640, when it was renamed New Haven. In 1716, Yale College moved to New Haven. British forces attacked New Haven during the American Revolution. Incorporated as a town in 1784, New Haven became a center of maritime trade in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The British Navy blockaded the port during the War of 1812. Eli Whitney, Samuel F. B. Morse, and other residents contributed to the development of industrial technology, and New Haven became an important manufacturing center during the Civil War. New Haven was the joint capital, with Hartford, of Connecticut from 1701 until after the Civil War.

Webster's New Geographical Dictionary (Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, 1988), 833; Courtlandt Canby, The Encyclopedia of Historic Places (New York: Facts on File, 1984), 2:653.