History of Darien, Connecticut
The history of Darien, Connecticut, has been shaped by its location on the shore of Long Island Sound along the main route from Boston to New York City, initially with sailing ships and dirt roads for transportation, and later with locomotives and highways.
Settlement began in the late 17th century with permission from Stamford authorities to start building roads cut "in the woods".
[clarify][2] In 1703 a school district was set up in Noroton at what is now the southwest corner of Nearwater Lane and the Boston Post Road.
"[3] According to Castellon, Mather "was described as 'of medium height, slender, distinguished for learning, piety, free and easy in conversation, with a good business sense.'
[3] Near the start of the American Revolution, General George Washington and 19,000 of his men marched from Boston to New York City, passing through Middlesex Parish.
[2] During the American Revolution, Middlesex Parish was controlled by Patriots but frequently raided by local Tories who had fled to British-controlled Lloyd's Neck on Long Island.
The captives suffered five months in British prisons in New York City before those who survived their confinement were exchanged and returned to their homes.
Hoping to ambush the Tories, Patriots hid behind a stone wall at the southeast corner of Nearwater Lane and the Boston Post Road.
[2] One night in March 1781, Tories went up Brookside Road and robbed the place, forcing the Mathers to reveal where the cache was stashed.
Until the advent of the railroad in 1848, Darien remained a small, rural community of about 1,000 farmers, shoemakers, fishermen, and merchants engaged in coastal trading.
By the 1790s, Holly Pond was no longer fully open to the Sound, but at Gorham's Landing, where Rings End Road meets the Goodwives River, small sailing vessels from New York, Eastern Connecticut and even the West Indies would pull up during high tide for trade with local merchants.
In what is now the Hindley School playing fields, close to the Boston Post Road, a "Union Chapel" was created in the 1830s for religious groups other than the original Congregationalists.
Union Chapel was no longer around when Irish Roman Catholics founded St. John Church next door in 1888[2] (dedicated on December 15, 1889).
[4] In 1864 during the Civil War, the first home for disabled veterans and soldier's orphans in the United States was built on a 19-acre (77,000 m2) tract[5] at Noroton Heights.
After World War II the institution's services were transferred to the larger Veterans Home and Hospital Rocky Hill, Connecticut.
The current center of town, where the railroad tracks cross the Boston Post Road, was called "Darien Depot".
Following the war, the train connection allowed Darien to become a popular resort for prosperous New Yorkers who built summer homes in Tokeneke, Long Neck Point, and Noroton (this pattern was repeated elsewhere along the Connecticut shore and inland).
The house itself was expanded in 1921 with a living room designed by the architect who created the Wrigley Building in Chicago and built by the contractor who constructed the pulpit of St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City.
[9] In 1902, Anson Phelps Stokes, a New York merchant, banker and philanthropist, bought the southern tip of Long Neck and built "Brick House" where he and his family lived for "many years," according to Henry Case and Simon Cooper.
[4] In 1916, Carnegie's wife, Louise, wrote a friend: The property was later occupied by the Convent of the Sacred Heart which once ran an elite girls' school there.
[17] The company eventually went under and a property owner's association took control of the narrow, winding roads, which followed old trails and cattle paths.
In early March of that year, the company dredged about 500,000 cubic yards (380,000 m3) from the Good Wives River on the eastern side of the peninsula.
A crew of about 25 men from the Arundel Corp. of Baltimore worked 24 hours a day for about 11 months on the dredging, and a 160-foot (49 m) stone breaker was created, running eastward.
[19] A tract of 40 acres (160,000 m2) near Tokeneke, formerly part of the Delafield estate and the adjoining Waterbury and Bell property, named "Ceder Gate" was developed starting by 1912.
[21] The Ku Klux Klan, which preached a doctrine of Protestant control of America and suppression of blacks, Jews and Catholics, had a following in Connecticut and Darien in the 1920s.
[22] By 1926, the Klan leadership in the state was divided, and it lost strength, although it continued to maintain small, local branches for years afterward in Darien, as well as in Bridgeport, Stamford, Greenwich and Norwalk.
[24][25][26] Laura Z. Hobson's bestselling 1947 novel Gentleman's Agreement was set in Darien to highlight American anti-Semitism via an unwritten covenant that prohibited real estate sales to Jews.
