the Hartford Grammar School. For the last fifty years this school and the Hartford High School have been practically the same thing. The Hopkins Grammar School at New Haven has always been in a flourishing condition. It was founded in 1660 and the building is on the corner of High and Wall streets. It has long been a prominent preparatory school for Yale University.

Governor Hopkins was thus one of our earliest American philanthropists and his gifts to education set a precedent that has since become one of the greatest factors in American progress.

The

THIRD GOVERNOR

of

CONNECTICUT

was

GEORGE WYLLYS

A distinguished Englishman of rank and means who received a university education and left the life of a country gentleman to assist in founding a government of civil and religious liberty

GEORGE

WYLLY S

G

EORGE Wyllys was an Englishman of means and rank

who became an ardent advocate of the Puritan movement and decided to live among the men and women who held opinions similar to his own.

He was born about 1570 in the town of Fenny Compton, County of Warwick, England. His father was a man of wealth and position, who gave his son as good an education as could be obtained at an English university of that period. Settling on a fine estate in Warwickshire, he lived the life of a country gentleman, and had plenty of time to watch the course of events in England.

Becoming interested in the cause of the Puritans, Wyllys, rather late in life, found his native land uncongenial to him and planned to settle in this country. In 1636 he sent his steward, William Gibbons, to America, accompanied by twenty men, to purchase for him in Hartford, “an estate suitable to his rank." Gibbons was also instructed to have a dwelling-house erected on the estate, and to put everything in readiness for the advent of the Wyllys family. Considerable time was spent in preparation for the reception, for Wyllys did not arrive until 1638— two years after his steward.

His estate embraced the square now between Main, Charter Oak, Governor, and Wyllys streets in Hartford, and was apparently a pretentious establishment for the sparsely settled colony.

Wyllys was one of the original planters of Hartford. On his farm stood the famous Charter Oak, in which the Connecticut charter was secreted. There was a legend current for many years that Governor Wyllys' steward, Gibbons, gave orders to have the ancient oak cut down, but that a party of Indians dissuaded him from his plan to remove it from the estate.

After settling in Hartford, Wyllys took a leading part in the transacting of public business, and was one of the framers of the Constitution of 1639. On April 11, 1639, he was chosen as one of the six magistrates of Connecticut, and held the office until his death.

In 1641 he was elected deputy governor, and the next year governor of the colony. He was also commissioner of the United Colonies. Holding the office of governor one year, Wyllys did not appear prominently after his retirement from office, and he died in Hartford, March 9, 1644-45.

He left four children, one of whom, Samuel Wyllys, was graduated at Harvard College in 1653 and was magistrate in Connecticut for thirty years.

A grandson of Governor Wyllys was secretary of the colony from 1712 to 1735; his son and successor, from 1735 to 1796; and