Statue - Samuel Stone

Samuel Stone was born in Fore Street on the site of present day Baroosh. He has baptised at All Saints Church on 21^st Feb 1602. He attended the newly established Hale Free Grammar School in 1617 as one of its first pupils.

At 18 years old Samuel Stone left to go to Emmanuel  College Cambridge to study Theology. He graduated in 1627 with both a BA and a MA. At Cambridge Samuel Stone meet Thomas Hooker. They both fell out with the established church and become non conformists and in 1633 opted to travel to the New World on a ship called the Griffin arriving at Newtown, now Cambridge, Massachusetts.

In 1635 Hooker and Stone transferred as preacher and teacher with 120 founders of the community to an Indian settlement in the Connecticut River Valley.  In 1637 the town was renamed “Hartford” after Stone’s birthplace. Samuel Stone died in Hartford in 1663.

The statue of Samuel Stone located between Millbridge and Hertford Theatre was erected to celebrate the Millennium by Keith Marshall, the proprietor of the long establish Hertford furniture business in Fore Street, after visiting Hartford, Connecticut. The statue was designed by Henry Tebbutt from Hertfordshire University in 1999.