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CONNECTICUT
State Flag
Grand Lodge of Connecticut 8 th July 1789
Grand Lodge of Connecticut
P.O. Box 250
Wallingford, Connecticut 06492, USA
Telephone: 1 (203) 679-5903
www.ctfreemasons.net
Connecticut is a state in the New England region of the northeastern
United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the
east, Massachusetts to the north, and the state of New York to the west
and the south (with which it shares a water boundary in Long Island
Sound).
Connecticut is named for the Connecticut River, the major U.S. river that approximately bisects the state. Its
capital city is Hartford. Much of southern and western Connecticut (along with the majority of the state’s
population) is part of the New York metropolitan area; three of Connecticut’s eight counties are statistically
included in the New York City combined statistical area, the same area is widely referred to as the Tri-State
area. Connecticut’s center of population is in Cheshire, New Haven County, which is also located within the Tri-
State area.
Connecticut is the 3 rd least extensive, the 29 th most populous, and 4 th most densely populated of the 50 United
States. Called the Constitution State, Nutmeg State, and “The Land of Steady Habits”, Connecticut was
influential in the development of thefederal government of the United States.
Connecticut’s first European settlers were Dutch and established a small, short-lived settlement in present-day
Hartford at the confluence of the Park and Connecticut rivers, called Huys de Goede Hoop. Initially, half of
Connecticut was a part of the Dutch
colony, New Netherland, which
included much of the land between
the Connecticut
and Delaware rivers.
The first major settlements were
established in the 1630s by the
English. Thomas Hooker led a band
of followers overland from the
Massachusetts Bay Colony and
founded what would become
the Connecticut Colony; other
settlers from Massachusetts founded
the Saybrook Colony and the New
Haven Colony. Both the
Connecticut and New Haven
Colonies established documents of
Fundamental Orders, considered the
first constitutions in North America.