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Suffield is a town in Hartford County, Connecticut, United States. It had once been within the boundaries of Massachusetts. The town is located in the Connecticut River Valley with the town of Enfield neighboring to the east. In 1900, 3,521 people lived in Suffield; as of the 2010 census, the population was 15,735. The town center is a census-designated place listed as Suffield Depot in U.S. Census records. Bordering Massachusetts, Suffield is part of the Springfield, Massachusetts NECTA. Suffield is only from Springfield, and is more oriented toward it than toward Connecticut's capital of Hartford, which lies to the south. ==History== Originally known as Southfield—pronounced "Suffield", on May 20, 1674, the committee for the settling of the town petitioned: The petition was granted by the Massachusetts Bay court on June 3, 1674. Suffield was incorporated as a town in March 1682.〔Sellers, Helen Earle (no date, c. 1965; reprint from The Connecticut Register and Manual, 1942 Edition). ''Connecticut Town Origins: Their Names, Boundaries, Early Histories and First Families''. Page 81. Stonington, Connecticut: The Pequot Press, Inc.〕 Also on early 17th and 18th century maps, Suffield was also spelled as Suthfield. Suffield and the surrounding area was part of the equivalent lands compromise with Massachusetts in 1716.〔(Vermont: The Green Mountain State )〕 Suffield's native and adopted sons include Rev. Ebenezer Gay, a renowned Congregational minister; U.S. Postmaster General Gideon Granger; real estate speculator Oliver Phelps, once the largest landowner in America; composer Timothy Swan; architect Henry A. Sykes; sculptor Olin Levi Warner; Seth Pease, surveyor of the Western Reserve lands in Ohio, most of which were controlled by Suffield financiers and speculators; and Thaddeus Leavitt,〔Leavitt's daughter Jane Maria Leavitt, wife of Vermont Congressman Jonathan Hunt was the mother of architect Richard Morris Hunt, painter William Morris Hunt and photographer Leavitt Hunt〕 inventor of an early cotton gin, merchant and patentee of the Western Reserve lands.〔(Famous Sons of Suffield, Historic Suffield, suffield-library.org )〕 Thanks to the town's early prominence and wealth, it boasts an astonishing collection of early New England architecture.〔(Suffield Historical Society )〕 The Kent family, for whom the town's library is named, originated in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and boasted relations to many prominent early New England families, including the Dwight family of Northampton, Massachusetts, the Hooker family of Hartford, the Dudleys of Guilford, Connecticut, and the Leavitts of Suffield.〔(Family History of Samuel Kent, Suffield Historical Society )〕〔(Genealogical Notes, or Contributions to the Family History of Some of the First Settlers of Connecticut and Massachusetts, Nathaniel Goodwin, Hartford, 1856 )〕 Descendants of Robert Olds, who arrived from Sherborne, Dorset, in 1667, include automotive pioneer Ransom Eli Olds, Copperhead Ohio politician Edson Baldwin Olds, his great-grandson USAAF General Robert Olds, and his son, iconic USAF fighter pilot Robin Olds. Slavery was common throughout the Connecticut River Valley during the eighteenth century, and the 1774 Census for the Colony of Connecticut listed 37 slaves in Suffield. Throughout the Connecticut valley, wealthy merchants, tavern owners and town ministers owned slaves. When Major John Pynchon originally purchased from the Pequonnocks and Agawam tribes a six-mile tract of land, which he called Stoney Brooke Plantation, he first ordered the construction of a sawmill, and used two of his slaves, Harry and Roco, for the construction.〔( Slavery in the Connecticut Valley of Massachusetts ) 2009, Robert H. Romer〕 Suffield's third minister, Reverend Ebenezer Devotion, became minister in 1710, and “sixteen years later the town voted to give him £20 to purchase a slave.〔(Slavery in the Connecticut Valley of Massachusetts ) 2009, Robert H. Romer〕 Reverend Ebenezer Gay, Devotion’s successor, owned six slaves throughout his long term, 1742-1796. Reverend Ebenezer Gay Jr. manumitted the family three remaining slaves in 1812. They were Titus, Ginny and Dinah.〔() Retrieved January 22, 2013〕 "Princess", a slave belonging to early Suffield settler, Lieut. Joshua Leavitt, died November 5, 1732.〔(Documentary History of Suffield in the Colony and Province of the Massachusetts Bay in New England, 1660-1749, Hezekiah Spencer Sheldon, Clark W. Bryan Company, Springfield, Mass., 1879 )〕 Some of Leavitt's descendants became ardent abolitionists, including Joshua Leavitt and his cousin Roger Hooker Leavitt, who operated an Underground Railroad station in Charlemont, Massachusetts. One of the earliest graduates of the Yale Medical School was one of Suffield's earliest physicians. Dr. Asaph Leavitt Bissell, born in 1791 at Hanover, New Hampshire, to parents originally from Suffield, attended Dartmouth College, and later graduated in the second class of the Yale Medical School. Bissell moved to Suffield, where he rode horseback to make house calls on patients. Bissell's saddlebags are today in the collection of the Yale Medical School's Historical Society.〔(When house calls were horse calls, Yale Medicine, Winter/Spring 1998 )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Suffield, Connecticut」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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