William Kelsey Founder Memorial
Clinton, Lower Connecticut River Valley Planning Region, Connecticut
Marker Inscription
IN MEMORY OF WILLIAM KELSEY 1600 - 1680 ONE OF THE FOUNDERS OF THE CHURCH AND THE TOWN OF CLINTON
The Story
In the middle decades of the 17th century, English Puritans pressing out from the first Connecticut settlements planted new towns along the shoreline of Long Island Sound, binding each community together around a covenanted church. William Kelsey (1600–1680) was one of the settlers who helped establish both the congregation and the town at this spot on the Connecticut coast, part of the generation that laid the civic and religious foundations of colonial New England. In that era the meetinghouse and the town were nearly one and the same, so to found the church was to found the town itself. This stone keeps the memory of one of those founding townspeople alive.
Why it matters
The founding of small covenanted towns like this one is the seedbed of American local self-government, where the New England habit of governing community life through the town and the congregation first took root.
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Related people
- · William Kelsey
Related events
- · Founding of the church and town of Clinton, Connecticut
Themes & tags
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