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Live From Springfield, Hartford's Neighbor To The North

Connecticut Public Radio | By Colin McEnroe
Published July 26, 2012 at 4:03 PM EDT
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http://cptv.vo.llnwd.net/o2/ypmwebcontent/Commodore%20Skahill/Colin%20McEnroe%20Show%2007-26-2012.mp3

The city of Springfield, Mass. was founded by a nice guy who also happens to be an ancestor of the novelist Thomas Pynchon.

William Pynchon led the first expedition to Springfield. He was looking for less rocky and more fertile land than he and his people had found in Roxbury, Mass. The reason I say he was a nice guy is connected to why Springfield affiliated itself with the Massachusetts Bay Colony instead the Connecticut Colony, which was a heck of a lot closer.
 
Pynchon seems to have been much more of an advocate for peaceful coexistence with native Americans than was Connecticut's infamous John Mason. There was also a beef between Mason and Pynchon about corn prices in which Hartford founder Thomas Hooker unfairly fined Pynchon 40 bushels of corn.
 
All I'm saying is, we could be sitting in Springfield, Conn. right now if everybody played nicer. Pynchon also went on to write the New World's first banned book. 
 
Leave your comments below, e-mail colin@wnpr.org or Tweet us @wnprcolin.
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Colin McEnroe
Colin McEnroe is a radio host, newspaper columnist, magazine writer, author, playwright, lecturer, moderator, college instructor and occasional singer. Colin can be reached at colin@ctpublic.org.
See stories by Colin McEnroe

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