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News Details (Posted: October 20, 2009):
The History of Trumbull
Full Description:
Trumbull was settled as a part of Stratford, Connecticut after 1639. The northern parts of present-day Trumbull were purchased from the Paugussett Indian Tribe in 1661 and 1662 by Stratford selectmen; Lt. Joseph Judson, Captain Joseph Hawley and John Minor.
Old Farm's
By the early 1670s, all the land fit for planting around Mischa Hill, located in the Nichols section of Trumbull, had been surveyed and divided by the townsmen. The settler's cleared the land by day and returned to the safety of their homes in Stratford village at night. They built barns to protect livestock and stone walls to establish property lines. This fertile area around Mischa Hill was commonly called Old Farm's as early as 1700 in the Stratford land records.
Permanent settlement
In the early 1680s, the children of the original founding families of Stratford began to settle on their ancestral farmland along the Farm Highway, establishing a village separate from Stratford. Some of these large farms were a mile long. In 1683, Ephraim Hawley married and built a home on his father's land called Captain's Farm. In 1688, John Curtiss gifted his farm, at the time he called it "Mischa Hill", to his son Benjamin. Zachariah Curtiss built his home before 1721 at "Old Farm's" on land given to him by his father Captain William Curtiss. Ebenezer Curtiss received his land in 1699 that bordered near the farm that had been previously owned by Lt. Joseph Judson. Judson had removed to Woodbury, Connecticut in 1673 for religious reasons and his farm was sold to Abraham Nichols sometime before Judson's death in 1690.
Local church and government established In 1725, the families residing at Mischa Hill, desiring to have their own meeting house, were given permission to form their own Parish named Unity and in 1730 they established the Unity Congregational Church. Others began settling the areas of Trumbull now called Chestnut Hill, Stratfield, Trumbull Center, Long Hill, and Tashua. In 1744, the Parish of Unity and the Long Hill Parish of the Stratfield section of Stratford, asked permission to combine and become the Society of North Stratford. The General Assembly in Hartford referred to the eastern boundaries of Unity at that time as ancient when they approved the new town in 1744. The name of the town changed to Trumbull in 1797 when the town was incorporated and local government was established. The new town was named after Jonathan Trumbull who served as an advisor to General George Washington during the American Revolutionary War and became Connecticut's first governor.
Lauzun's Legion
Huldah Hawley was born February 23, 1755 and died June 27, 1856, at the age of 101. The widow of Tory Chauncey Beardsley, Huldah took pleasure in talking of the exciting times of the Revolution and related during her lifetime about the time that two companies of French soldiers, under the command of French General Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau, encamped a whole winter during the American Revolutionary War on what is now known as Mountain Hill, a high rocky bluff in the central part of the Village of Nichols Farm's. This bluff, at the time, commanded a view of about seventy miles of the Long Island Sound to the southwest. Hawley said the soldiers would compel her to cook for them and she furnished provisions for them through fear that they would kill her. It is also believed that from June 28 to June 30, 1781, during the American Revolutionary War, units of the French cavalry called Lauzun's Legion encamped overnight on a hilltop in present day Abraham Nichols Park. The Legion was commanded by Colonel Armand Louis de Gontaut-Biron, duc de Lauzun and was sent to protect the flank of French General Rochambeau's main army marching south to reinforce American troops under the command of General George Washington at the Siege of Yorktown in 1781. French coins have since been found near the site of their camp.
