Boundaries

Unlike Indians, who recognized natural features of the landscape as territorial limits, Europeans imposed artificial lines on the Earth's surface to, demark political divisions. The history of Connecticut's boundary lines is complex, but intriguing. The best overall discussion is by Clarence W. Bowen in Boundary Disputes of Connecticut (Boston: J. R. Osgood and Co., 1882). This ninety-page book, actually Bowen's Yale dissertation, includes seven facsimile maps. It is still occasionally available from rare-book dealers for $50 or more. A second source, much more recent but no more accessible, is "Connecticut Boundary Line Surveys," by Henry Wolcott Buck, in the Annual Report of the Connecticut Society of Civil Engineers (1938), pages 209-28. It contains some excellent maps. Roland Mather Hooker's Tercentenary pamphlet XI, Boundaries of Connecticut (1933), is short, clear, illustrated with maps, and easily accessible. Discussion of boundary disputes during the colonial era can be found in Parker Bradley Nutting's doctoral dissertation, "Charter and Crown: Relations of Connecticut with the British Government, 1662-1776" (University of North Carolina, 1972).

The particular boundary that has developed the largest literature is the western border, the New York line. This line was not definitively settled until 1882 and was still being resurveyed in the 1920s. There are several curious stories associated with it. It is no coincidence that Bowen published in 1882, for that was the year of a more or less final survey. (21 U.S. Statutes at Large, 351) The development can be traced through official New York, Connecticut, and U.S. documents. See the subject file under "Boundaries" at the State Library. Look at Report of the Commissioners Appointed to Ascertain the Boundary Line Between the States of New York and Connecticut, Appointed April 9, 1856. This report, which includes magnificent foldout maps, was published at Albany in 1857. A companion Report of the Commissioners on the Boundary Line Between Connecticut and New York was published by the Connecticut General Assembly (New Haven, 1860). In 1925 the line was resurveyed under supervision of the U.S. Congress. The surveyors kept as close to the 1860 line as possible but made a few alterations and laid new concrete and stone markers. Their work is described in Public Law 307, pp. 731-38, vol. 43, part I of the Public Acts, 68th Congress, January 10, 1925. (See House Report 1039.)

The best account of the Rye-Greenwich dispute is in Charles W. Baird's History of Rye, 1660-70 (New York: Randolph Press, 1871). But it is dealt with also in Dixon Ryan Fox's Yankees and Yorkers (New York: New York University Press, 1940) and briefly in Richard Dunn's Puritans and Yankees (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962). Marshall H. Mongomery published a nice little piece for the layman on that 1 3/4 mile strip running north and south along the New York line, chipped off in 1731 to compensate for Connecticut's acquisition of Greenwich and Stamford-"The Oblong," in Annual of the New Canaan Historical Society, 1950-1951. In 1882, Simeon E. Baldwin wrote an essay, "The Boundary Line Between Connecticut and New York," which focuses on the Greenwich-Stamford panhandle and adjacent waters, published in his Three Historical Papers and in Papers of the NHCHS 3(1882):27 1 90. The Long Island Sound complications are further elaborated in Raymond B. Marcin's "A History of Connecticut's Long Island Sound Boundary," Connecticut Bar Journal 46(September, 1972)3:50-64. Marcin points out the importance of this boundary to the shellfish industry, and traces the legal ramifications and history of the dispute. Is the Sound an arm of the sea and therefore under U.S. jurisdiction and subject to international law? Or is it part of Connecticut and New York and subject only to state and municipal law?

William Bowie's "Resurveying the Coast of Connecticut," Annual Report of the Connecticut Society of Civil Engineers, 1934, pages 44-69, is a general, though technical, discussion of the techniques used by the Civil Works Survey in its work of making a second-level accuracy survey of the coast of the entire United States. The Long Island Sound boundary has generated some controversy, however. For that controversy, see under "Oysters," below.

Richard Dunn has dealt extensively with the eastern boundary in Puritans and Yankees (above) and in "John Winthrop, Jr. and the Narragansett Country," in William and Mary Quarterly. 3rd Series 13 (January, 1956)1:68-86. About Winthrop's attempt to gain the territory for Connecticut, Dunn says, "When the evidence is pieced together, we must conclude that because of his appetite for real estate, Winthrop was chiefly responsible for starting the arid quarrel between the two colonies over the Narragansett Country--the most confused, petty and time-consuming boundary dispute in all New England history." (p. 68) Dunn deals also with Winthrop's attempt to annex Long Island to Connecticut in "John Winthrop, Jr., Connecticut's Expansionist: The Failure of His Design on Long Island, 1663-1675," in New England Quarterly 29(March, 1956)1:326. In addition to the general works mentioned above, the Massachusetts line can be studied in Joel N. Eno, "The Conquest for Land - Connecticut's Changes and Exchanges of Territory," in Connecticut Magazine 10(1906)3:475-81.