Joseph Judson

Stratford, Connecticut

The Judson family was part of the first wave of settlers at Stratford, Connecticut Colony, in 1639, when the plantation was called Pequannock. Joseph's father put up the first house in the settlement shortly after arriving; Joseph took over the home about twenty years later after his father moved to New Haven. By 1658, Joseph owned a farm at Mischa Hill, four miles north of Stratford in what is now the Nichols Farms Historic District of Trumbull, Connecticut.

He became a freeman of Stratford in 1658. As the town expanded, Judson was given authority to buy land from Native Americans on behalf of the community. In 1661, he worked out a deal with Paugussett leaders for the Mohegan Hills Purchase north of Stratford, and the next year he arranged the Long Hill Purchase west of town. Judson was chosen as deputy to the Connecticut General Court for thirteen half-year terms between 1659 and 1667.

He was an ensign in the Stratford militia by 1663 and got promoted to lieutenant in the First Company of the Stratford Trainband when it was created in 1672. A religious split developed between conservative Puritans and more liberal residents. Most townspeople followed minister Adam Blakeman, who insisted on a personal conversion experience for full church membership and allowed only children of full members to be baptized. Judson pushed back against these rules and argued publicly with fellow settler Joseph Hawley and others through letters, town meetings, and petitions to the General Court.

In 1669, the General Court backed the Half-Way Covenant, which loosened the baptism rules. Even so, the dissidents in Stratford started their own church in 1670 under Reverend Zachariah Walker, a former Presbyterian minister. This Second Church of Stratford used the same meetinghouse as the First Church, but that arrangement led to conflict.

Woodbury, Connecticut

The ongoing friction between Stratford's two churches led the Connecticut General Court in 1672 to give Joseph Judson and three others—Samuel Sherman, William Curtice, and John Minor—permission to start a new plantation at Pomperaug, about fifty miles north of Stratford. The grant allowed any honest Stratford resident to join and required the group to settle within three years. That same year, Judson and his fellow founders wrote up the 'Fundamental Articles agreed upon in order to ye settlement of a plantation at Pomparague,' which was ratified in 1673 by seventeen original settlers.

This document had six sections and six amendments, covering how home lots and meadows would be divided and sold, how town debt would be handled, support for ministers, land for a school, and a rule that everyone had to submit to 'Ecclesiastical Gouerment.' In 1673, Judson, Sherman, and Minor bought the first tract of land from Potatuck leaders of the Paugussett people—a deal called the 'First Purchase.' The plantation was officially named Woodbury in 1674, and the General Court approved its royal patent in 1686.

What is now called Ancient Woodbury originally included the First Purchase and three later purchases; today it covers the towns of Woodbury, Roxbury, Southbury, Bethlehem, and parts of Middlebury, Oxford, and Washington. In May 1684, Judson and John Minor were elected as Woodbury's first deputies to the colony's legislature. Judson served five more half-year terms between 1684 and 1686, and was a colonial commissioner for five terms from 1684 to 1689.

He also helped set town boundaries: in 1675 he surveyed lands in Derby, Woodbury, Mattatuck, Pootatuck, and Wyantenock; in 1678 he surveyed land between Milford and Derby; and in 1680 he served on a committee that fixed the boundaries of Woodbury, Derby, and Mattatuck.

Did You Know?

• He negotiated the Mohegan Hills Purchase from Paugussett leaders in 1661 and the Long Hill Purchase in 1662.
• Judson helped draft the 'Fundamental Articles' for the settlement of Pomperaug in 1672, which required settlers to submit to 'Ecclesiastical Gouerment.'