Trumbull, a town in Fairfield County, Connecticut, in the New England region of the United States, was originally home to the Golden Hill Paugussett Indian Nation, and was colonized by the English during the Great Migration of the 1630s as a part of the coastal settlement of Stratford.
In May 1725, the northwest farmers of Stratford petitioned the Colony of Connecticut to establish their own separate village. They proposed calling their new village Nickol's Farms, after the family that owned a large farm in its center, but in October 1725 the new parish was named Unity.
In 1744, Unity merged with the Long Hill parish (organized in 1740) of the Stratfield section of Stratford to form the Society of North Stratford. North Stratford controlled its own religious and educational affairs. However, to have a voice in governmental functions such as adopting laws and establishing taxes, the inhabitants were required to attend town meetings in Stratford, an overnight journey for some.
After ten years of unsuccessful petitions, the Connecticut General Assembly granted complete town rights in October 1797. The new town was named for George Washington's staunch supporter, Revolutionary War governor, patriot, statesman, reportedly an owner of one slave, and merchant Jonathan Trumbull (1710–1785).Jonathan Trumbull historic marker website retrieved on July 26, 2010
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Historical overview
Native Americans The Golden Hill Paugussett Indian Nation occupied the territory of Trumbull as a self-sustaining community for thousands of years before the arrival of the English in the late 1630s. The Indian Nation lived along the banks of the Pequonnock River in the Pequonnock River Valley and also around the natural lake first called Mischa Lake, after the Indian chief who resided there, and now known as Pinewood Lake.
After twelve to fifteen years had passed, the Stratford settlement had grown so much in size that the displaced Indian Nation began to ask for compensation for land north of an east-to-west line north of Long Island Sound. This line was located within the present-day village of Nichols, Mischa Hill, Pinewood Lake and White Plains areas.Orcutt, Vol. 1 p. 269 The original Stratford proprietors agreed and began to make several purchases from the Indians in the 1650s. However, relations between the English and the Indians became strained throughout the Colony of Connecticut as settlements continued to grow and displace the Native Americans.
In 1652, the Court at the Colony of Connecticut ordered that no Indian could walk near an Englishman's house either in town or at his farm on the Sabbath without being fined or imprisoned.The Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut Vol. 1 p. 234 In 1656, it was ordered that no one in the Colony of Connecticut could sell an Indian a horse or mare or any boat or boat rigging without suffering a penalty of 5 to 1.The Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut Vol. 1 p. 284 The tribe maintains a small reservation in the Nichols section of Trumbull that is considered to be the oldest continuing reservation in Connecticut and the smallest in the US.
Colonial era
Founding and Puritan era Trumbull was originally settled as a part of Cupheag, the Pequannock word for "harbor", a coastal settlement established in 1639 by Puritan leader Reverend Adam Blakeman (pronounced Blackman), William Beardsley and either 16 families—according to legend—or approximately 35 families—suggested by later research—who had recently arrived in Connecticut from England seeking religious freedom. The main village and stockade was built where the Housatonic River flows into Long Island Sound.Orcutt Vol. 1 p. 86 In 1643, the settlement changed its name to Stratford either in honor of William Beardsley who came from Stratford-upon-Avon, birthplace of William Shakespeare, or for Stratford-le-Bow, England.The Hawley Record, Elias S. Hawley, 1890, p. 429
Stratford is one of many towns in the northeastern American colonies founded as part of the Great Migration in the 1630s when Puritan families fled an increasingly polarized England in the decade before the civil war between Charles I and Parliament (led by Oliver Cromwell). Some of the Stratford settlers were from families who had first moved from England to the Netherlands to seek religious freedom, like their predecessors on the Mayflower, and decided to come to the New World when their children began to adopt the Dutch culture and language.
Like other Puritan towns founded during this time, early Stratford was a place where church leadership and town leadership were both united under the pastor of the church, in this case Reverend Blakeman. The goal of these communities was to create perfect outposts of religious idealism where the wilderness would separate them from the interference of kings, parliaments, or any other secular authority.
By the mid-1650s, the Golden Hill Paugussett Indian Nation began to petition the Court of the Colony of Connecticut for compensation for lost territory taken by the encroaching English settlement. This legal action led the court to set the town boundary on May 15, 1656, to include all of the territory inland from Long Island Sound between the Housatonic River and the Fairfield town line, including all of Trumbull.The Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut, Vol. 1, p. 281
The English continued to purchase territory from the Native Americans, entering the deeds of transfer into the land records. However, the first volume of such records has been lost. It took Lt. Joseph Judson, Joseph Hawley and John Minor until April 1662 to secure the last written deed of transfer from the Paugussett Indian Nation for the western part of the town of Trumbull, referred to as the Long Hill purchase. This deed references that it was lying west of the land they had already purchased.Orcutt, Vol. 1 p. 25
Town formation and settlement patterns In 1661, the town voted to allow each inhabitant to take up a whole division of common land anywhere in the woods where they could find fit planting ground as long as it was not within of the town meeting house, and they were prohibited from making it their dwelling place without the consent of a committee or the town selectmen. Elder Phillip Groves, Captain William Curtiss and Lt. Joseph Judson, early farmers in Trumbull, were named to a committee to lay out the land as they saw fit.Orcutt, Vol. 1 p. 167
In 1668, according to the town records, there were only five families recorded as "outlivers", or living beyond two miles from the Stratford meetinghouse. However, by the 1670s, after numerous individuals were encouraged to and had received permission to dwell outside of the two-mile limit, the Stratford selectmen stopped recording outlivers altogether.Orcutt Vol. 1, p. 273Orcutt Vol. 1 p. 168
In 1670, the "three mile" or "woods division" was made. This divided common land located from the Stratford meeting house and included land up to away from it. The common land grants were laid out in a fashion so that each tract had a share of a run of water, woods, natural meadow, plains, swamp and ledge. The grants were often a quarter of a mile north to south and one mile in length east to west, about of land. Each freeman received division land according to his right or rank in the township, and many exchanged or sold their grant after receiving it.
In spring of 1680, the town decided to lay out all undivided common land within of the meeting house. This area would have included the southern third of Trumbull.Orcutt, Vol. 1 p. 282 In 1685, some families filed complaints at the court at the Colony of Connecticut at Hartford saying they were not receiving their land grants from the woods division in a timely manner. Therefore, the court ordered the town to apportion all common land located between two and six miles from the Stratford meeting house, which included all the territory in the lower third of Trumbull.Colonial Connecticut Records 1636–1776 Vol. 3, p. 186 The division of the common land in Trumbull took until 1800 to complete entirely.
Subsections
Woodbury
In the 1660s, Lt. Joseph Judson had a disagreement with the majority of elders in Stratford as he tried to introduce the Half-Way Covenant, and this led to a major rift which lasted for many years and split the town.History of Ancient Woodbury Connecticut From the First Indian Deed 1659 to 1872, William Cothren, 1872, Vol. 2 p. 916 In 1671, Judson received permission from then-Governor John Winthrop, Jr. to create a new town called Woodbury inland. Judson and Reverend Walker left Stratford with a dozen other families and moved to the newly created town, abandoning their farms in the Trumbull area of Stratford. Judson and Walker died in Woodbury in 1690 and 1699 respectively.Jacobus, Donald Lines, History and Genealogy of the Families of Old Fairfield, Volume: reprinted two volumes in three, Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc., Baltimore, Maryland, 1976, Original Date, 1930–1932 Page: Vol. I, pgs. 637-638
Joseph Judson and many others had established their farms in Trumbull decades before leaving for Woodbury in 1671. These farms were not sold initially, but were just physically abandoned and were referred to in the land records as Old Farms. Some of the other families to remove to Woodbury, abandoning their farms in Trumbull, were Caleb Nichols, Abraham's father, who removed to Woodbury and died there in 1690,The Nichols Family website retrieved 2011 03-19 and John Curtiss, who gifted his entire farm in the woods on "Misha [sic] Hill" (Trumbull) to his son Benjamin in 1688 and removed to Woodbury.Stratford Land Records Vol. 2 p. 70 In a deed recorded at Stratford in 1710, Sgt. John Curtiss, "of Woodbury", sold to Abraham Nichols that was located "near the place called and known by the name of Lt. Joseph Judson's Farm."Stratford Land Records Vol. 2, p. 83
Nichols
It is not known exactly when the first settlers began to clear land and establish farms in the area, due to the fact that the first volume of Stratford's land records was destroyed around 1650. The first settlements were doubtless made soon after the settlement of the mother-town of Stratford in 1639.History of Fairfield County, Connecticut with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of Its Prominent Men and Pioneers, Hurd, D. Hamilton, J.W. Lewis & Company, Philadelphia, PA, 1881, page 771 By 1658, Lt. Joseph Judson, Jeremiah Judson and Joseph Curtiss became freemen by the court of the Colony of Connecticut and established farms there. A freeman had to own real property in their own name before they could be elected as freemen.The Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut, Vol. 1, p. 315Orcutt, Vol. 2, p. 109
The area now called Nichols, located in southeastern Trumbull, was first called Mischa Hill in the land records for the Native American who lived there. In the late 1660s, it was commonly called Lt. Joseph Judson's Farm, or Judson's Farm, after the owner of the largest farm on its hilltop. After Judson and others removed to establish the town of Woodbury in 1672 and abandoned their farms on Mischa Hill, it was called Old Farms. In the early 1700s, it was called Nickol's Farms, then in 1725 it became a part of Unity and in 1744, North Stratford. During the mid-1800s, the area was called Amblersville after the principal manufacturer in the center of the village.
It has been said that Abraham Nichols made the first permanent settlement within Trumbull around 1690 or 1700, depending on the source, and then other families subsequently ventured into the wilderness to establish mills, churches, and schools. Nichols' landholdings were said to total .Commemorative biographical record of Fairfield County, Connecticut: containing biographical sketches of prominent and representative citizens, and of many of the early settled families Higginson Book Co., 1899 p. 38 However, there is no documentation to support these claims.