Rev. John Warham was the leader of a Puritan movement beginning in the County of Somerset, England, at the time of the Pilgrims, and ending with the settlement of Connecticut's first town ~ Windsor.

John Warham was baptised on October 9, 1595, in Crewkerne, the son of Richard Waring. John graduated from Oxford University in 1618 and was ordained an Anglican minister on May 23, 1619 at Silverton, Devon. He then settled in Witheridge, Devon. He married Cecilia Hatch of Cullompton, Devon, on June 17, 1619.

Upon the death of his father in 1623, Warham returned to his childhood home of Crewkerne, in nearby Somerset. As the new Crewkerne rector, he preached Puritanism in defiance of the Church of England. In 1627, Bishop William Laud dismissed Warham for these Puritan views, but Warham just moved on to St. Sidwell's Church in Exeter, Devon, taking at least several of his congregation with him, including William Gaylord, Humphrey Pinney, William Phelps, George Hull, & Giles Gibbs ~ all of whom who would eventually follow Warham to the Massachusetts Bay Colony and thence to Windsor, CT.

In 1630, Warham led a group of his followers to New England, sailing from Plymouth, England, on the "Mary & John". They settled initially in the south corner of Boston Harbor, where they founded the town of Dorchester. Within a few years, however, Warham and his followers moved again, as part of the first settlement of the new Colony of Connecticut, founding a village they also named Dorchester. In 1637, this new village, located at the navigable headwaters of the Connecticut River just north of today's Hartford, was renamed Windsor.