Thomas Hooker, English-born founder of the Colony of Connecticut (died 1647)

Thomas Hooker was a prominent English colonial leader and Congregational minister, who founded the Connecticut Colony after dissenting with Puritan leaders in Massachusetts. He was known as an outstanding speaker and an advocate of universal Christian suffrage.

The Connecticut Colony, originally known as the Connecticut River Colony, was an English colony in New England which later became the state of Connecticut. It was organized on March 3, 1636, as a settlement for a Puritan congregation of settlers from the Massachusetts Bay Colony led by Thomas Hooker. The English would secure their control of the region in the Pequot War. Over the course of the colony's history it would absorb the neighboring New Haven and Saybrook colonies. The colony was part of the briefly-lived Dominion of New England. The colony's founding document, the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut has been called the first written constitution of a democratic government, earning Connecticut the nickname "The Constitution State".