Notes on Hugh Calkins
"Hugh Calkins was a radical, in religion a non-conformist, and living in the troublous times of Charles, the First, soon became satisfied that there were safer countires than England and Wales--for men who wished to worship God according to the
dicatates of their own consciences. Accordingly, he with his wife, Ann, and John, their son, then four years old, joined a body of emigrants called the 'Welch Conspany,' and with their pastor, Rev. Richard Blinman, embarked and came to America,
about 1638 or 1640. They settled first at Green's Harbor (now Marshfield) in New Plymouth colony, but religious dissentions arising, Mr. Blinman, Hugh Calkins and others removed to Gloucester.
Hugh Calkins became one of the first board of selectmen, and in 1650 was chosen deputy to the general court of Massachusetts Bay colony. He was chosen again in 1651, but for some reason he and others removed in that year to Connecticut colony,
some say to Saybrook, but he could not have remained there long, as he was soon in New London. The Connecticut colonial records show that Hugh Calkins was deputy at the general court from New London, May 20 1652. In all, he served twelve times as
deputy from New London. By order of the general court, held Octover 3, 1654, Hugh and another were appointed a committee for enlisting men to fight the Narragansett Indians. The records also show that he was a deputy magistrate.
In 1660 he again changed his residence to the place where the city of Norwich now stands, then a wilderness and owned by the Mohegan Indians. Just previously a treaty had been concluded, by and between the celebrated major Mason and others with
the Mohegan chiefs, by which a tract of land nine miles square around Norwich was ceded to the whites, for the sum of seventy pounds sterling. Hugh and his son, John, were of the thirty-five original proprietors.
Hugh appears in the colonial records as a deputy from Norwich to the general court, ten times. He was an active worker there in all measures for the public good; and also at home constantly identified with public interests. He was a deacon in the
first church built in Norwich."
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