The Cornwall School Episode

One illuminating episode in Connecticut history relates to Indians from Georgia. A missionary school was established in Cornwall to train Asians, Hawaiians, Africans, and Indians to go back among their own people to preach Congregational gospel. Two Cherokees—Galgina, who took the name of Elias Boudinot, the school’s benefactor, and his cousin John Ridge—wooed and won the daughters of two of the town’s most re­spectable families and took them off to the Cherokees reservation to rear large families of mixed-bloods. The episode created an exciting, bitter scandal all across the state. Both Indians became important Cherokee politicians, but ultimately unpopular ones, and they were murdered by a gang of outraged braves in 1839. The Connecticut phase of the story is told in two histories of Cornwall, those of E. C. Starr (1926) and Theo­dore S. Gold (1904). The whole story with its tragic aftermath is told in

Gabriel, Ralph Henry. Elias Boudinot, Cherokee and His America. Norman: Univer­sity of Oklahoma Press, 1941.

Wilkins, Thurman. Cherokee Tragedy: The Story of the Ridge Family and the Decimation of a People. New York: Macmillan, 1970.

See also

Chamberlain, Paul H. The Foreign Mission School. Cornwall: Cornwall Historical Society, 1968. “Cornwall Mission School.” In Contributions to the Ecclesiastical History of Connecticut. Edited by Leonard Bacon. New Haven: J.H. Benham, 1861.