When historiographers mention the name of Benjamin Trumbull at all, it is invariably as a minor, dull, regional, Whig historian whose chief concern was with the history of Congregationalism in pre-Revolutionary Connecticut. True, his works were few, his vision was somewhat narrow, and his emphasis would hardly comport with that of the late twentieth century, but the fact remains that Benjamin Trumbull was a good historian, and his A Complete History of Connecticut (1797, 1818) has remained the point of departure for any serious study of the early history of that state.

Trumbull, the son of Benjamin and Mary Brown Trumbull, was born in the Gilead Parish of Hebron, Connecticut, on 19 December 1735. Upon his graduation from Yale in 1759, he studied theology with the Reverend Eleazer Wheelock at Lebanon Crank Parish (now Columbia) and earned his keep as a tutor in the Indian Charity School, which would later become Dartmouth College...