General Assembly papers, 1803-1870, bulk 1821-1870

The General Assembly Papers begin in the year 1803 and continue into the 2010s. They consist of records that follow chronologically what are commonly called the “Connecticut Archives.”² The papers described here cover the years 1821-1870, although they include two fugitive documents from 1803 and 1813, relating to the Milford and Stratford Bridge Company and the Washington Bridge Company (Box 1, folder 1). The 1870 closing date was chosen because it was about the time of the end of post-Civil War legislation to promote civil rights and to provide care for disabled veterans. RG 002:004, General Assembly Papers, 1803-1871, bulk 1821-1870, to see the complete finding aid and container list (pdf).

The Papers consist of petitions, memorials, remonstrances, affidavits, resolutions, public acts, annual reports, reports of legislative committees, gubernatorial messages, and other official papers that document the activities of the General Assembly, Connecticut municipalities, corporate bodies, and many individuals.

The General Assembly Papers are arranged chronologically by year and then by number under a variety of subjects. Folder titles reflect both contemporary practice and the need to provide guidance to researchers. The numbering system was established in the 1970s and presumably reflects the arrangement of the papers at that time. It is impossible to determine how extensively the original order of these papers was altered between the time of their creation and boxing and numbering in the 1970s. Some numbers are missing. It is often not known if the items have disappeared, were transferred to other files, or numbering errors have occurred. Missing numbers are listed on the folders where they should appear.

A wide variety of subjects are covered in the General Assembly Papers, from those of only local import to those of national interest. National and federal-state relations issues are generally found in files identified by the phrase, Federal Relations. These files typically contain printed resolves from various states, often accompanied by resolutions of the General Assembly, urging Congress to pass new legislation, proposing constitutional amendments, or expressing opinions on such subjects of national importance as internal improvements, the protective tariff, gradual emancipation, colonization, nullification, sale of western lands, the constitutionality of the national bank, the admission of Texas, free soil, and the integrity of the Union. In 1825, for example, resolutions from several states were forwarded to Connecticut on the subject of gradual emancipation and colonization (Box 6, folder 15). At its 1830 session, the General Assembly registered its opposition to a Missouri proposal to directly elect the president and vice-president (Box 13, folder 12). The General Assembly passed a resolution in 1834 supporting the Bank of the United States and opposing President Jackson’s veto of its recharter (Box 20, folders 3, 5-6) In early 1861 after the secession of six states from the Deep South, to cite a final example, Connecticut received resolutions from eleven states seeking ways to preserve the union from further destruction (Box 96, folders 3-5). The Federal Relations files should be of particular value to researchers interested in the ways national issues impacted upon Connecticut and the ways the states tried to exert influence on Congress.

Internal improvement and transportation issues occupied a great deal of the General Assembly’s time and the Transportation Revolution of the nineteenth century is well documented. Numerous turnpike, canal, ferry, bridge, railroad, and horse railroad companies were incorporated between 1821 and 1870. These companies have long since disappeared and the records of virtually all of them are no longer extant. The General Assembly Papers, therefore, provide prime documentation on developments in an important era of American history. Articles of incorporation, amendments to charters, requests for special privileges, and a variety of other papers about scores of large and small transportation companies are found throughout the General Assembly Papers. These materials have relevance not only for those interested in larger issues like the rise and decline of turnpikes in Connecticut and the growth of the railroad industry, but also for those studying smaller transportation companies in particular localities or regions. Examples of smaller companies include the New York and Sharon Canal Company, Hadlyme Turnpike Company, Pettipaug and Guilford Turnpike Company, Mill Cove Bridge Company (New London), New Haven and New London Railroad Company, South Manchester Rail Road Company, and the New Haven and West Haven Horse Railroad Company.

The era between 1821 and 1870 can also be considered the Age of Incorporation, as the General Assembly chartered hundreds of organizations serving a variety of commercial, fraternal, and benevolent purposes. The General Assembly Papers, particularly for the period after 1830, contain extensive files of petitions, memorials, articles of incorporation, drafts of general legislation, and other similar papers documenting the establishment and development of commercial banks, insurance companies, savings banks, mining companies, manufacturing companies, fire engine companies, ecclesiastical societies, agricultural societies, benevolent societies, park associations, fraternal organizations, cemetery associations, educational institutions, and other similar organizations. The papers provide information on such corporate bodies as the Union Manufacturing Company of East Haddam incorporated in 1831, the Mansfield Silk Manufacturing Company founded in 1832, Essex Fire Engine Company (1833), The Proprietors of the New Burial Ground in Greenwich (1833), Wadsworth Athenaeum (1842), St. Patrick’s Society of Hartford (1842), First Baptist Society of Middletown (1844), The Connecticut Fire Insurance Company (1850), and Connecticut Temperance Life Insurance Company (1851). Additional examples include the Cheney Brothers Silk Manufacturing Company (1854), the Trustees of the Aged and Infirm Clergy and Widows Fund (1855), Colts Patent Fire Arms Manufacturing Company (1855), Colchester Bank (1856), The Hebrew Literary and Social Union (1863), Fitch’s Home for Soldiers (1865), Young Men’s Christian Association of Meriden (1866), St. Mary’s Catholic Total Abstinence Beneficial Society (1867), Woodland Park and Cemetery Association (1868), and the Fat Man’s Association (1870).

The papers provide a great deal of information on municipalities. To cite just three examples from the 1853 session of the General Assembly, an act was passed “Extending the Limits of the City of Hartford” (Box 69, folder 8), the Borough of Colchester was incorporated (Box 68, folder 13), and a high school established in Norwich (Box 68, folder 13). The General Assembly Papers contain material on such subjects as the incorporation of new towns, cities, and boroughs, revisions to borough and city charters, education, economic development, and the growth of social institutions. Numerous petitions from individuals in towns ask for legislative action on state-wide issues. In 1830, for example, the General Assembly received petitions from inhabitants of eleven towns opposing lotteries. Three years later, in response to the controversy surrounding the Prudence Crandall School, a number of communities expressed their opposition to educating “people of color . . . from other States” (Box 18, folder 3). At the same session, citizens from New Haven petitioned to prevent the hunting of “feathered game” between February and July. The 1853 General Assembly was flooded with petitions from more than thirty towns urging passage of temperance legislation. The next year the General Assembly passed “An Act for the Suppression of Intemperance” (Box 70, folder 3), that in part addressed the concerns of the temperance petitions.

Lives of individuals are much less well documented and what exists is difficult to find. Petitions from persons seeking legislative favor are found in such files as those on State Prison Releases, Forfeited Rights Restored, Sale of Lands, Divorces, Lands, and Estates. Only a handful of such cases are, however, dealt with by the General Assembly in any given year. Many petitions, however, contain the names of scores of people. Signatures on a temperance petition, for example, provide important information about the beliefs of those who sign them. One such 1845 memorial from inhabitants of Millington Society in East Haddam includes the signatures of six Starks. The headings for Schools and School Districts sometimes list the names of all enrolled students. Many petitions, memorials, and remonstrances, then, contain the names of numerous signers, but even if one knows the relevant town or municipality, there is no certainty that a petition will exist for the time frame of interest or that the people searched for will be included. In addition, researchers may have to laboriously search through a number of boxes before finding a possibly relevant document. Occasionally, however, an issue arises of such broad interest that the inhabitants feel virtually obligated to express an opinion. One such controversy occurred in 1865 over the New London County court house, between adherents of Norwich as the single site for sessions of the Superior Court and Supreme Court of Errors and those who favored the existing dual New London and Norwich locations (Boxes 106-07). One petition from Norwich in favor of the change was signed by 1,910 males, while two remonstrances from New London contained more than 3,000 signatures.

The General Assembly Papers include important, although widely scattered, information on minority communities in Connecticut. Many researchers have examined the materials on African-Americans and Native-Americans and some of these documents have become tattered with use. All these materials, therefore, have been photocopied and photocopies have been inserted in place of the originals. Separate containers house second copies of these documents. The originals of these papers have been restricted and researchers may examine them only if they need to photograph or scan them and then only with the permission of the State Archivist.

The state’s small Indian population is relatively well documented because Native-Americans had tribal status and legislative approval was required before any tribal lands could be sold. Researchers studying the Mohegan, Niantic, Golden Hill Paugussett, Turkey Hill Paugussett, Eastern Pequot, Mashantucket Pequot, and Schaghticoke tribes will find relevant materials in the General Assembly Papers. Connecticut’s vibrant African-American community by contrast is much less well documented. The files contain a total of eight petitions from 1838, 1842, and 1857 asking for educational benefits, jury trials for suspected fugitive slaves, and for the right to vote. Much of the remaining material consists of petitions and accompanying documents from individuals asking for release from state prison. In 1841 Joel Freeman and eleven others from Bridgeport petitioned to establish a school district “exclusively for colored Children” (Box 33, folder 14) and subjects such as care for the indigent are sometimes addressed. Connecticut’s Irish, German, and Jewish communities are documented, primarily through petitions seeking to incorporate fraternal and benevolent societies, such as the Hibernian Provident Society (1850) and the Hartford Turner & Singing Society (1864).

The business of the state legislature did not, however, consist just of responding to petitions, redressing grievances, granting charters of incorporation, and giving its views on national political issues. The bulk of the work of the General Assembly concerned civil and military appointments, specific resolutions authorizing the expenditure of state funds, drafting and passing public acts, crafting reports, and receiving annual reports from state agencies and a variety of corporate bodies, not to mention the routines of legislative organization. The General Assembly expressed its desire to promote economic development through the granting of charters to scores of transportation companies, commercial banks, savings banks, insurance companies, and manufacturing concerns. It also, however, established state boards and commissions to provide oversight over the insurance, banking, and railroad industries and passed acts to provide a measure of regulation of them. In 1865, for example, the state legislature passed “An Act relating to the Location of Railroad Stations in certain Cases” (Box 107, folder 18) and “An Act for the Protection of Life at Railroad Crossings (Box 108, folder 1). The next year it passed a resolution asking the Railroad Commissioners to inquire if railroads were in the habit of halting freight trains on public highways “to the annoyance of the traveling public” (Box 109, folder 1). The records of the General Assembly can also be used to track changes in attitudes towards juvenile offenders, care of the mentally incompetent and insane, capital punishment, public education, destruction of the environment, lotteries, alcohol consumption, agriculture, the powers of municipalities, the role of the judiciary, and honoring patriots and Civil War veterans.

The preceding paragraphs should give researchers an idea of the rich variety of subjects that can be studied in the General Assembly Papers between 1821 and 1870. During this period, the powers and responsibilities of state government gradually expanded and private initiatives to promote community good or ameliorate the conditions of the less fortunate in society were the hallmarks of the age of benevolence.

2. Sylvie J. Turner, “The Connecticut Archives,” Connecticut Historical Society Bulletin 33 (July 1968): 81-89.