Fairfield, Connecticut (CT) real estate

Driving along U.S. Route One, the Boston Post Road, we follow the trail of a foot path which once connected the Indian villages along Long Island Sound. For thousands of years native Americans have dwelt in this area, following a seasonal movement from the hillsides in winter in search of game to the seashore in summer to fish and plant their corn. At the time of contact with Europeans in the early seventeenth century, the local Indians were known as the Unquowas, for the area in which they lived, which is thought to mean "the place beyond". The Unquowas were a small clan of the Paugussett tribe, which was centered in southwestern Connecticut. By the time of Ludlow's settlement, the population of these Indians had been severely decimated by diseases introduced by the early explorers. They made little resistance to Ludlow's claim of all the land from the Saugatuck River in the west to the Stratford bounds (now Park Avenue) in the east and a day's march inland from the Sound - a distance of approximately twelve miles.

The founding of Fairfield was not without conflict, however. Roger Ludlow had first seen this area in 1637 when as one of a band of settler-soldiers, he had pursued a group of Pequot Indians to a swamp in Southport. There, the Pequots made a last stand in a brief but bloody war caused by their resistance to settlers expansion into the Pequot's territory in eastern Connecticut. The battle is commemorated by a monument on the Post Road in Southport.

Although few seventeenth-century dwellings remain standing in Fairfield, evidence of the early settlement of the town is visible to this day in the form of the town's road system. Roger Ludlow laid out a grid for his new town; today's Post Road, Old Post Road, Beach Road, and South Benson Road, centered on the Meeting House Green, now the Town Green. On these streets the settlers built their homesteads and the Meeting House, seat of government and place of worship. Around the village was a cluster of common fields where the early settlers raised their crops, grazed livestock and cut timber. Oldfield Road, Benson Road and Unquowa Road were once farm lanes which gave access to these fields. As the town grew and farmsteads were built outside of the village, more highways radiated from the center to provide access: Pequot Road to Greens Farms, Bronson and Mill Plain Roads to Greenfield, Jennings Road to Holland Hill. By the 1670's the settlers began to divide the vacant land in the north of the town between themselves. A series of Long Lots were created, one to a family, running from today's Fairfield Woods Road, Brookside Drive and Hulls Farm Road north to the Danbury bounds. Redding, Weston, and Easton were all once included within the boundaries of Fairfield. Today, if you drive up one of the old "upright highways" - - Sturges Highway, Burr Street, or Morehouse Highway- you are traveling on the access roads to the lands once owned by those families.

Today, Fairfield is a thriving community of over 53,000 residents. Its population is extremely diverse, reflecting the different geographic and ethnic backgrounds of its people. Yet, despite the many changes of the last few years, it is possible today to still examine the history of the people who have lived within Fairfield's bounds during the last 400 years. Through the objects and records they have left behind, we can begin to understand how Fairfield was transformed into the town we know and love today.