144 CONNECTICUT'S INFLUENCE 
the congregation from the New Town, led by its pastor 
and teacher, halted near the Dutch fort and called their 
settlement Hartford, after Stone’s English birthplace. 
About half of the migration seems to have come to 
Hartford, and the wholesale character of it may be best 
appreciated when we learn that of the five hundred 
inhabitants of Cambridge at the beginning of the year, 
only fifty were left at the end of it. Truly, our good 
city on the Charles was well-nigh depopulated. A great 
many empty houses would have been consigned to decay 
but for one happy circumstance. Just as Hooker’s peo- 
ple were leaving, a new congregation from England was 
arriving. These were the learned Thomas Shepard 
and his people. They needed homes, of course, and 
the houses of the seceders were to be had at reason- 
able prices. I cannot refrain from mentioning, before 
taking my departure from this part of the subject with 
the seceders, that Shepard’s people were much more in 
harmony with the Massachusetts theocracy than their 
predecessors. Indeed, when in that very year it was 
decided that the colony must have a college, it was 
further decided to place it in the New Town where its 
students and professors might sit under the preaching 
of Mr. Shepard, a man so acute and diligent in detect- 
ing and eradicating heresy that it could by no possi- 
bility acquire headway in his neighbourhood. Thus 
Harvard College was founded by graduates of the 
ancient university on the Cam; and thus did the New 
Town at last acquire its name of Cambridge. But alas 
for human foresight! The first president that Harvard 
had was expelled from his place for teaching heresy, 
being neither more nor less than a disbeliever in the 
propriety of infant baptism ! 
