Richard Risley

Infobox_Politician
name =Richard Risley


birth_date =prior to 1615
birth_place =
death_date =October, 1648
death_place =Hartford, Connecticut, USA
office =
spouse = Mary Arnold

Richard Risley (before 1615 - 1648) was an early Puritan settler in the Massachusetts Bay Colony and one of the founders of Hartford, Connecticut. ["Founders of Hartford". www.cslib.org. http://www.cslib.org/foundhtfd.htm. Accessed 1 July 2007.] Risley sailed from England on July 15, 1633, in the ship Griffen with Thomas Hooker, William Stone, John Cotton, and John Haynes. [Goold, Roy D. "The First Risley in America". "The Risley Family Genealogy" (Volume 1).] They arrived in Boston on September 4, 1633.

In May 1636, Risley left Massachusetts with almost the entire company he had arrived with two and a half years earlier. They found John Winthrop to be too dictatorial. The group headed west through the wilderness, and after a month stopped in an area now occupied by the city of Hartford, Connecticut.

Within the year, the group started a collective government to fight the Pequot War. By the next year, they had adopted what is now generally considered the first written constitution in Western history, the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut. The group eventually signed a treaty with the Indians for a tract of land and settled down.

The present-day capitol building in Hartford sits on the original Risley land grant. ["Founding of Connecticut & The Pequot War". www.cypresscollege.edu. http://socialscience.cypresscollege.edu/~lyerby/connect.htm. Accessed 1 July 2007.]

Risley died at Hockanum, Connecticut of typhoid in October 1648, leaving his wife and three children, ages two months to eight years.

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