Who said New Haven is a mere 225 years old?
Mayor John DeStefano, that’s who.
In his “Monday Message” this week, the mayor wrote, “2009 will celebrate the 225th birthday of New Haven… a time to reflect on what our city has achieved over time but also to unite around what we can be in the future.”
Sounds good, but hasn’t Hizzoner lopped off 146 years of sermons, the stock and pillory, Indian wars, and business development?
To repenteth of his arithmetical error, as the Puritans might say, all Hizzoner has to do is go to his window and look across the Green at Center Church. There, the arched wooden facade offers its brief history lesson: The city was chosen for settlement in 1637, it says. And then “in AD 1638 a company of English Christians led by John Davenport and Theophilus Eaton were the founders of this city.”
Mayoral spokesperson Jessica Mayorga provided a clarification about the choice of the 225 number.
“This is because the original Town of New Haven included West Haven, East Haven, North Haven, Hamden, Bethany, and part of Amity. The city, as it is now, was actually founded in 1784 after a petition was accepted by the state Assembly to create the ‘City of New Haven’ from the original ‘Town of New Haven.’”
All of this is explained on the city’s well done precis of New Haven history on the municipal website. And DeStefano elaborates on the case in this Register op-ed.
Bill Hosley, executive director of the New Haven Museum, said the 1638 date has more significance.
“In Connecticut,” he wrote in an email message, “so many of the local governments and the whole of our state government remained pretty much in tact, not even changing constitutions, from the Revolution into the early national period.”
Bill Hosley suggested the next genuine red letter day must be in 2013, the 375th anniversary of the founding of New Haven. “In 1988,” he said, “New Haven pulled out the stops for its 350th. I’m not sure if the mayor and others will think 375 a significant enough number to warrant planning something, but we’d be all for it and do what we can to help.”
The mayor’s office would not divulge what plans are in the offing for that celebration.