East Haven came of age during the Revolution. In July 1779 a British force under General William Tryon landed along the shore and struck at Black Rock Fort in Morris Cove before marching on New Haven — the war reaching right onto East Haven's beaches. The town remembers the other side of that year too: the Marquis de Lafayette and his troops encamped on the Green, and Lafayette thought enough of the place to return and visit it again decades later, in 1824. Salt for the army, men for the cause, and a French general on the common — the Revolution left its mark on the little shoreline parish.
In 1707 the parish shed its old name and became East Haven. The town that grew up around the Green took its lasting shape in 1774, when colonists raised the Old Stone Church — First Congregational — a steepled fieldstone meetinghouse that still stands as one of the oldest stone churches in New England. The Town Green spread out before it, a small common that would gather the town's monuments, its bandstand, and, much later, an oak grown from a sapling sent by President Theodore Roosevelt. The church and the Green remain the historic heart of East Haven.
Why People Visit East Haven
Visitors come to East Haven for an unhurried slice of the Connecticut shore: a ride on a hundred-year-old trolley, a stroll past one of New England's oldest stone churches, and an afternoon on a quiet Sound-side beach. Salt marshes and shoreline trails sit a few minutes from the Town Green, and New Haven's museums and harbor are right next door. Equal parts colonial heritage and easy coastal living, East Haven rewards anyone drawn to the working shoreline of Long Island Sound.
