Committee Report of the State and Circumstances of the Groton Pequot
To the Honorable General Assembly of the Colony of Connecticut now Sitting in New Haven
We, your Honors’ committee appointed at your sessions in Hartford May last to enquire into the state and circumstances of the Indians in the Town of Groton to find what relief was needful presently to be done for schooling and preaching among them, etc. In pursuance of said appointment, we repaired to the Indian lands in said Groton Town per account. There was about one hundred and fifty Indians inhabited there, the greater part of them under sixteen years of age, their houses chiefly within the the compass of about one mile square. Their land not the best quality for tillage, some of it good and improved after the English mode. Many [ hole ] the Indians appear poor and needy. Sundry of them widows who lost their husbands in the late war. There is on said land a small school house improved by Hugh Sweatingham, who was employed by the commissioners at Boston as a school master with an allowance of twelve pounds per year. Was informed per the Reverend Jacob Johnson that said commissioners allowed him six shillings and eight for each sermon he preached to said Indians. The Indians appeared disposed to attend preaching and to send their children to school, but many so poor that they could not provide decent clothing for that purpose. Upon finding them so disposed and poverty forbidding to send their children to school, provided them some quantity of clothing distributed among the poorest children as also some school books and some more clothing is provided to deliver out so that we apprehend the twenty pounds ordered per the Assembly in May will enable the poor children to attend the school until some time in the winter but but leave to represent to Your Honors that1 they will stand in need of some further help from some quarters to enable the[ hole ] to attend the school through the winter, and that it appears to us the reward given to Mr. Johnson for preaching, considering his attention to them in sickness and attending funerals, etc., is not adequate to the service done, and that the allowance to the school master is not sufficient to induce continuance in the service.
All which is submitted by Your Honors’ humble servants,
Committee
October 11, 1766
Cataloguing: 238a, 238b
- 1. Deleted text: the poor children’s money