Mortlake, Connecticut

The western boundary was approximately half mile west of and parallel to today's Connecticut State Route 169, while the southern boundary laid approximately half mile north of today's U.S. Route 6 – looking at a map, it roughly aligned with Herrick Road and the part of Brown Road that runs more or less straight east–west.

Falling outside the legal framework that Connecticut organized Towns, Mortlake's residents found themselves without responsibilities, but also without normal rights (such as to levy taxes to pay for roads and general welfare of its inhabitants).

In 1775 Israel Putnam, who held a commission from the Colony of Connecticut as a Major General, was plowing a field in Brooklyn Center (near where the library is today) when word reached him of the Battle of Lexington and Concord.

Leaving his plow in the field, he rode a relay of horses to reach Boston in only 18 hours, taking command of the rebel forces, and at Breed's Hill uttering the famous, “Don't shoot until you see the whites of their eyes!” Brooklyn Parish in 1786 would be set off from Pomfret and Canterbury to become a town in its own right.

In the 1920s and 30s, Edith Kermit Carow, wife of Theodore Roosevelt, operated an old family property as Mortlake House – a country inn for vacationing city visitors.