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#  Entered Union   Year Settled

5th          Feb. 6 1788          1620

 

Nickname

Constitution State

 

Rank      Population

29th       3,501,252

 

Rank      Square Miles

48th       5,543

 

State Bird

American Robin

 

State Flower

Mountain Laurel

 

State Tree

White oak See Also: Charter Oak

 

State Motto

Qui transtulit sustinet       He who transplanted sustains

 

One of the original 13 states, Connecticut is known as the "Constitution State." It gets its name from an Algonquian word meaning "land on the long tidal river." Hartford has been the capital of Connecticut since.

 

What in the west was "reserved" and who reserved it?

 

Northwest Territory

When the American Revolution ended in 1783, the United States gained the Northwest Territory – an area of land that included the present states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin and part of Minnesota. Four states, Virginia, Massachusetts, New York and Connecticut, claimed portions of the Northwest Territory for themselves.

 

Smaller states without western land claims argued that if the land claims of the larger states were recognized, people and businesses would leave the smaller states for the wealthier larger states. The only solution was for these lands to be turned over to the U.S. government.

 

All the states but one eventually did so. Do you know which state was the holdout?

 

It was Connecticut, which claimed land, called the Western Reserve, all the way to northeastern Ohio. Connecticut wanted the land to aid citizens who had suffered serious losses during the Revolution. Do you know how large the state of Connecticut would be today if it still retained that land?

 

This land stretched west from Connecticut to northeastern Ohio. Congress granted Connecticut a portion of its claim in 1786, and in 1792, Connecticut gave 500,000 acres of that land to citizens whose homes were burned during the American Revolution.

 

In 1795 the Connecticut Land Company bought the remaining land in order to resell it and Cleveland was established in 1796 as the first permanent settlement in the reserve. In 1800, Connecticut and the United States agreed to make the Western Reserve part of the Ohio Territory.

 

First Hamburgers

Do you love hamburgers? Do you know how they were created?

The first hamburgers in U.S. history were served in New Haven, Connecticut, at Louis' Lunch sandwich shop in 1895. Louis Lassen, founder of Louis' Lunch, ran a small lunch wagon selling steak sandwiches to local factory workers. Because he didn't like to waste the excess beef from his daily lunch rush, he ground it up, grilled it, and served it between two slices of bread -- and America's first hamburger was created.

 

The small Crown Street luncheonette is still owned and operated by third and fourth generations of the Lassen family. Hamburgers are still the specialty of the house, where steak is ground fresh each day and hand molded, slow cooked, broiled vertically, and served between two slices of toast with your choice of only three "acceptable" garnishes: cheese, tomato, and onion.

 

Want ketchup or mustard? Forget it. You will be told "no" in no uncertain terms. This is the home of the greatest hamburger in the world, claim the owners, who are perhaps best known for allowing their customers to have a burger the Lassen way or not at all.

 

The Mark Twain House

Can a house have a heart and soul? Can people love their house even if others think it's odd?

 

In 1871, writer Mark Twain moved to Hartford, Connecticut, to be closer to his publisher. He rented a home in Nook Farm, a thriving literary community at the western edge of Hartford. In 1873, Twain, whose real name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens, and his family purchased land on Farmington Avenue in Nook farm and hired a New York City architect to design a house.

 

As the house was being built, the local newspaper noted that "it is one of the oddest looking buildings in the state ever designed for a dwelling, if not in the whole country."

 

Twain once said that the house "had a heart, and a soul. ... It was of us, and we were in its confidence and lived in its grace and in the peace of its benediction. We never came from an absence that its face did not light up and speak out its eloquent welcome -- and we could not enter unmoved."

 

Twain lived and worked in the house from 1874 to 1891. During this time he wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Do you think his unique house influenced his writing?