The earliest recorded event in Southport's history was "The Great Swamp Fight" or "Fairfield Swamp Fight" of July 1637 (not to be confused with the later Great Swamp Fight of King Philip's War), an episode of the Pequot War in which English colonial forces led by John Mason and Roger Ludlow vanquished a band of 80 to 100 Pequot Indians who had earlier fled from their home territory in the Mystic area and taken refuge with approximately 200 Sasqua Indians who inhabited the area that is now Fairfield.

[6] By 1831 the village had changed its name to Southport and was a bustling commercial area with warehouses, churches, schools, stores and elegant houses.

[7] Southport became a leading coastal port on Long Island Sound, its ships carrying produce and goods back and forth to New York City.

Designed to be easily stored, during the Civil War sales spiked, its high vitamin C content prized by the U.S. Navy to prevent scurvy.

[11] The U.S. Army prized it to treat gunshot wounds, at one point to the extent that General Ulysses S. Grant refused to move his troops if they were not supplied with onions.

[12] In the 1890s, 100,000 barrels of locally grown onions, carrots, potatoes, and other goods were shipped annually from Southport harbor.

Local farmers transported their Southport Globe onions and other crops via the growing shipping fleet housed in the harbor and, by 1836, it became larger than the New York City and Boston ports.

The increased use of large shipping containers also decreased transport costs and eventually drove the need to use ports deeper than Southport Harbor.

The local produce was transported to New York and Boston via train, to deeper water ports where larger vessels were docked.

[14] Today, much of the old village area is part of a town historic district, first established in 1967, where buildings from three centuries are protected for future generations.

[17] As a result, the Village serves as a time capsule of sorts, perfectly preserving a wide variety of very different architectural styles.

A Richardsonian Romanesque building, it was designed by the architect Robert Henderson Robertson and is a contributing property to the National Register Southport Historic District.

Among the titles in the Special Collections are Epistola de insulis nuper inventis by Christopher Columbus, translated into Latin by Leandro di Cosco and printed in 1493; two of the three contemporaneous histories of the Pequot War in New England; the Saybrook Platform which was the first book published in Connecticut in 1710.

[23] Also included in the collection is Phillis Wheatley's Poems on various subjects, religious and moral from 1786 as well as the typescript of the last four chapters of Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind.

[25] In 2006, the Pequot Library invested in a restoration project to address the condition of the elaborate metalwork set throughout their stacks.

Each row of shelving is framed by columns and the stairways linking the two stories are made with balusters of garlands and vines in copper plated cast iron.