Stamford, Fairfield, Connecticut, United States

Notes:
A bitter quarrel, cause unknown, within the Church of Christ in Wethersfield, precipitated the founding of Stamford. On October 19, 1640 the dissenters organized the Wethersfield Company and resolved to move, as a body, west along the Long Island shore to the banks of the Rippowam River. The land, originally about 128 square miles, had been purchased from local Indian tribes by Nathaniel Turner, an agent of the New Haven Colony, and New Haven was eager to sell it to fellow Puritans.



In the summer of 1641, 28 would-be planters and their wives and families and at least two «Negro servants» began building a meeting-house and their own homes on high ground above the harbor. At first they tried to transfer to the new world the semi-collective open-field system of farming that they had been familiar with in England. But the availability of land and the urge for privatization crippled the effort. By 1700 almost all the acres were in individuals hands. By that date too, Stamford had ceded territory in the north to the towns of Bedford and Pound Ridge in the Province of New York and was reduced to 80 square miles. Ultimately the formation of New Canaan in 1801 and Darien in 1820 reduced Stamford to its present size of almost 40 square miles.

Death

Matches 1 to 1 of 1

	Last Name, Given Name(s)	Date and Place	Person ID	Tree
1	Wardwell, William	Aft 1781		I6660	Duane's Ancestors