The mayor holds office for two years, and the city government is of the regular two chambered form. The assessed valuation of property is about $145,000,000, making it per capita one of the richest cities in the United States — toward $1,200 per head. The tax rate is something over two cents on the dollar, vary ing with the district school tax.
The first white settlement of Hartford was by the Dutch in 1633, at the junction of the Park and Connecticut, still called Dutch Point (although the original point is out in the Con necticut). They built there a fort called the °House of Hope* (commemorated by Huys hope avenue). (For the settlement of the Newtown men in 1635-36, and the adoption of the first written constitution of modern times, whence Hartford is called the °birthplace of American democracy,* see CoNxEcricuT). Hart ford was first named Newtown, changed to the present name in honor of its minister Samuel Stone's English birthplace. From here in 1637 sailed the expedition of 90 men under John Mason which heavily crippled and caused the ultimate destruction of the Pequots, the tr:be of recent Indian invaders who had dispossessed the original Indian holders and terrorized the other Connecticut Indians, and who were mak ing Connecticut untenable for civilized settlers. This campaign made possible Connecticut as it stands, and probably in any form. The Dutch were ejected from their fort in 1654; they had never really made a settlement. (For the at tempt of Andros to seize the charter, in 1687, see CHARTER OAK). In 1701 Hartford became joint capital with New Haven. In the Revolu tion, Hartford, as the head of the one rich store of supplies which the British could not seize, became of prime importance; the second com missary-general of the United States army, Jeremiah Wadsworth, was a Hartford mer chant. Governor Trumbull (Washington's °Brother Jonathan*), much of the time in Hartford, was also a strong reliance of Wash ington, who came to Connecticut to consult him; and in 1780 Washington and Rochambeau planned the Yorktown campaign here. The
Hartford Convention (q.v.) of 1814 sat here. In 1873 Hartford became the sole capital of the State. From its original limits have been cut off the towns of West Hartford, East Hart ford and Manchester (the latter directly from East Hartford).
Its native and adopted citizens have made the city one of the intellectual glories of New England. It was the birthplace of Noah ster (West Hartford was cut from Hartford). Frederick Law Olmsted, John Fiske and Edmund Clarence Stedman, and others of less note but of high merit; it had the services of Joel Barlow, George D. Prentice, John G. Whittier and others—after the Revolution, so brilliant a group of Connecticut authors and professional men gathered here or made it their literary headquarters that they were known all over the country as the °Hartford Wits* and are still remembered by the name; it was the long or permanent residence of riet Beecher Stowe, Mark Twain, Charles Dud- ley Warner and Horace Bushnell, besides John Trumbull the poet, Lydia H. Sigourney, and the remarkable Stonington Trumbull family — James Hammond, the antiquarian, Indian scholar and librarian, Gurdon the nature painter, and Annie (Mrs. Slosson) the writer and entomologist. In the musical field, Dudley Buck, the distinguished composer, was born here ,• and Henry C. Work of Middletown, the second greatest of American song-wrights, lived much here and died here. In the business world, J. Pierpont Morgan was born here, his father, Junius S. Morgan (by parentage and associatnns really a Hartford man himself), began his great business career as a Hartford dry-goods merchant, and Edwin D. Morgan, the war governor of New York, began his as a Hartford wholesale grocer and provision mer chant.