Plans for the colonial settlement were drawn up by the General Court in 1646; the first migrants came from nearby Connecticut colonies in 1650. On September 11, 1651, the General Court of Connecticut established the town of "Mattabesett". A couple of years later in November 1653, the settlement was renamed as Middletown. This name was chosen because the site was approximately halfway between Windsor and Saybrook on the Great River. Life was not easy for these early colonial Puritans; clearing the land and building houses, and tending farms in the rocky soil of New England was a labor-intensive ordeal. They had a strict society; offenses legally punishable by death in the Connecticut colonies included "witchcraft, blasphemy, cursing or smiting of parents, and incorrigible stubbornness of children."