House of Hope (), also known as Fort Good Hope (), was a
redoubt
A redoubt (historically redout) is a Fortification, fort or fort system usually consisting of an enclosed defensive emplacement outside a larger fort, usually relying on Earthworks (engineering), earthworks, although some are constructed of ston ...
and
factory
A factory, manufacturing plant or production plant is an industrial facility, often a complex consisting of several buildings filled with machinery, where workers manufacture items or operate machines which process each item into another. Th ...
in the seventeenth-century Dutch colony of
New Netherland. The trading post was located at modern-day
Hartford, Connecticut
Hartford is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of Connecticut. The city, located in Hartford County, Connecticut, Hartford County, had a population of 121,054 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 ce ...
at
Park River), a tributary river of the Fresh River (
Connecticut River
The Connecticut River is the longest river in the New England region of the United States, flowing roughly southward for through four states. It rises 300 yards (270 m) south of the U.S. border with Quebec, Canada, and discharges into Long Isl ...
). The location of this confluence of rivers is at contemporary Sheldon Street. The fort is recalled today with a nearby avenue called Huyshope,
once the center of economic activity in the city.
History
In 1633, the
Dutch West India Company
The Dutch West India Company () was a Dutch chartered company that was founded in 1621 and went defunct in 1792. Among its founders were Reynier Pauw, Willem Usselincx (1567–1647), and Jessé de Forest (1576–1624). On 3 June 1621, it was gra ...
(WIC) (1621–1793) of the United Netherlands
Dutch Republic
The United Provinces of the Netherlands, commonly referred to in historiography as the Dutch Republic, was a confederation that existed from 1579 until the Batavian Revolution in 1795. It was a predecessor state of the present-day Netherlands ...
built a fortified trading house on the south bank of the Little River (now
Park River), a tributary river of the Fresh River (
Connecticut River
The Connecticut River is the longest river in the New England region of the United States, flowing roughly southward for through four states. It rises 300 yards (270 m) south of the U.S. border with Quebec, Canada, and discharges into Long Isl ...
). The WIC had planned Fort Good Hope to be the northeastern fortification and a trading center of the WIC. The land was part of a larger tract purchased on 8 June 1633 by
Jacob van Curler on behalf of the WIC from the Sequins, one of the clans of Connecticut Indians.
Curler added a block house and palisade to the post while
New Amsterdam
New Amsterdam (, ) was a 17th-century Dutch Empire, Dutch settlement established at the southern tip of Manhattan Island that served as the seat of the colonial government in New Netherland. The initial trading ''Factory (trading post), fac ...
sent a small garrison and a pair of cannons.
English settlers from other New England colonies moved into the Connecticut Valley in the 1630s. In 1633, William Holmes led a group of settlers from Plymouth Colony to the Connecticut Valley, where they established
Windsor a few miles north of the Dutch trading post. In 1634, John Oldham and a handful of Massachusetts families built temporary houses in the area of Wethersfield, a few miles south of the Dutch outpost. In the next two years, 30 families from Watertown, Massachusetts joined Oldham's followers at Wethersfield. The English population of the area exploded in 1636 when clergyman Thomas Hooker led 100 settlers, including Richard Risley, with 130 head of cattle in a trek from Newtown (now Cambridge) in the Massachusetts Bay Colony to the banks of the Connecticut River, where they established Hartford directly across the Park River from the old Dutch fort. In 1637, the three Connecticut River towns—Windsor, Hartford, and Wethersfield—set up a collective government in order to fight the Pequot War.
In 1640
David Provoost was appointed Commander of Fort Good Hope
In 1650, representatives from New Netherland and New England agreed to the
Hartford Convention to settle border disputes. The boundary between the two colonies was set 50 miles west of the Connecticut River, placing the fort on English territory. In 1653, during the
First Anglo-Dutch War
The First Anglo-Dutch War, or First Dutch War, was a naval conflict between the Commonwealth of England and the Dutch Republic. Largely caused by disputes over trade, it began with English attacks on Dutch merchant shipping, but expanded to vast ...
, the English seized the fort from its tiny Dutch garrison.
See also
*
Saukiog
*
Fortifications of New Netherland
*
New Netherland settlements
*
Connecticut Colony
The Connecticut Colony, originally known as the Connecticut River Colony, was an English colony in New England which later became the state of Connecticut. It was organized on March 3, 1636, as a settlement for a Puritans, Puritan congregation o ...
*
Pequot
The Pequot ( ) are a Native Americans in the United States, Native American people of Connecticut. The modern Pequot are members of the federally recognized Mashantucket Pequot Tribe, four other state-recognized groups in Connecticut includin ...
References
Notes
{{Reflist
External links
The Onrust Project
History of Hartford, Connecticut
Hoop
1623 establishments in the Dutch Empire
Hoop
Buildings and structures completed in 1633