Notes:
The Town of Stonington is located in New London County, Connecticut, in the state's southeastern corner. It includes the borough of Stonington, the villages of Pawcatuck, Lords Point, Wequetequock, the eastern halves of the villages of Mystic and Old Mystic (the other halves being in the town of Groton). The population of the town was 17,906 at the 2000 census.
History
The first European colonists established a trading house in the Pawcatuck section of town in 1649. The present territory of Stonington was part of lands that had belonged to the Pequots who referred to the areas making up Stonington as "Pawcatucck" (Stony Brook to Pawcatuck River) and "Mistack" (Mystic River to Stony Brook). It was named "Souther Towne" or Southerton, by Massachusetts in 1658, and officially became part of Connecticut in 1662 when Connecticut received its royal charterr. Southerton was renamed as Mistick in 166:26 and again renamed as Stonington in 1666.:36 Thomas Miner, Walter Palmer, William Chesebrough and Thomas Stanton were the founders. The town of North Stonington was set off as a parish from Stonington in 1724 and incorporated as a town in 1807.
Stonington first gained wealth in the 1790s when its harbor was home to a fleet engaged in the profitable sealing trade in which the skins of seals clubbed on islands off the Chilean and Patagonian coasts were sold as fur in China.
Stonington repulsed two British naval bombardments. One, during the American Revolution, was a desultory bombardment by Sir James Wallace in the Frigate HMS Rose on August 30, 1775. The other was a more damaging three-day affair between Augusust 9 and 12, 1814. During the War of 1812, four British vessels, HMS Ramillies, HMS Pactolus, HMS Dispatch, and HMS Terror, under the command of Sir Thomas Hardy, appeared offshore on August 9, 1814. The British demanded immediate surrender, but Stonington’s citizens replied with a note that stated, "We shall defend the place to the last extremity; should it be destroyed, we shall perish in its ruins." For three days the Royal Navy pounded the town, but the only fatality was that of an elderly woman who was mortally ill. The British, after suffering many dead and wounded, sailed off on 12 August. The American poet Philip Freneau wrote (in part):
"The bombardiers with bomb and ball
Soon made a farmer's barrack fall,
And did a cow-house badly maul
That stood a mile from Stonington.
They kill'd a goose, they kill'd a hen
Three hogs they wounded in a pen—
They dashed away and pray what then?
This was not taking Stonington.
But some assert, on certain grounds,
(Beside the damage and the wounds),
It cost the king ten thousand pounds
To have a dash at Stonington.
The Stonington Harbor Light, a low stone building, was the first lighthouse established by the U.S. Federal Government, in 1823. In the 19th century Stonington supported a small fishing, whaling and sealing fleet, with some direct trade with the West Indies, enough in volume for it to be made a Port of Entry in 1842; the small granite Customs House faces Main Street just north of Cannon Square.
The New London and Stonington Railroad Company was incorporated on July 29, 1852.
The Groton and Stonington Street Railway was a trolley line that was created in 1904 to serve the Stonington area. The trolley was dismantled and replaced by buses in 1928.
In recent decades, Stonington has experienced a large influx of new home owners using historic Borough houses as second homes. The town has undergone a widespread reconditioning of these homes since the mid-1990s, when an altercation over redevelopment rights attracted substantial news coverage about Stonington's revitalization
City/Town : Latitude: 41.33606254130514, Longitude: -71.90727710723877Matches 1 to 1 of 1
Last Name, Given Name(s)  |
Birth  |
Person ID | Tree | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  Hewitt, Oliver | Wednesday 06 September 1741 | Stonington, New London County, Connecticut, USA | I449111 | Veenkoloniale voorouders |
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