The Revolution burned through in July 1779, when Governor Tryon's raiders — the same force that torched Fairfield and Norwalk that month — put the Greens Farms church and much of the parish to the torch. The congregation rebuilt, as Connecticut parishes did, and the church that stands today carries the line forward; the village's Revolutionary chapter runs with its neighbors' in the same hard summer, a story told at length on our Westport and Minutemen pages.
Two centuries after the Bankside landing, the shoreline gave Connecticut a different kind of landmark. At Sherwood Island — named for the Sherwood family who farmed it — the state's first land purchases in 1914 began what would become, after a long public battle over access and funding, Connecticut's first state park, fully opened in 1937: 238 acres of beach, marsh, and shade trees that taught the state what public shoreline could be. At the island's point stands Connecticut's 9/11 Living Memorial, on the spot where, on that clear morning, the smoke was visible down the Sound.
Why People Visit Greens Farms
- Spend a beach day at Sherwood Island State Park — Connecticut's first state park — and walk out to the point for the 9/11 Living Memorial's long view down the Sound.
- Find the Machamux Boulder on the old Common along Green's Farms Road — the 1648 settlement marked in stone.
- See the Greens Farms Congregational Church, the parish that rebuilt after 1779 and never broke its line.
- Swim the town side at Burying Hill Beach, the small crescent with the big history in its name.
- Walk or fish the marsh edges where the onion boats once loaded, and watch the ospreys work New Creek.
- Ride the New Haven Line to the little Green's Farms station and arrive the way a century of villagers did.
