Stamford grew up on the water. Through the colonial and early American years it lived by merchandising by sea — trading down the Sound to New York and out to the West Indies — and by the farms and mills inland. It saw a quieter echo of the Salem hysteria in a 1692 witch trial, sent the town of Darien off on its own in 1820, and by the mid-1800s had the railroad and the harbor working together. Today it is Connecticut's second-largest city, a Long Island Sound port about thirty-five miles up the shore from Manhattan.
Before it was Stamford, this harbor at the mouth of the river was Rippowam, home of the Siwanoy. In 1640 the land was deeded to the New Haven Colony's Capt. Nathaniel Turner by the Siwanoy leaders Ponus and Wascussee, and in 1641 about two dozen Puritan families from Wethersfield came down to settle it, led by the Rev. Richard Denton. They renamed it Stamford in 1642, after a town in Lincolnshire, England. The Rippowam name endures — for the river that still runs through downtown, and for the people who were here first.
Why People Visit Stamford, CT
Stamford balances harbor and city — sailboats on the Sound, a downtown skyline, and four centuries of history from Rippowam to the rail line. It is a Gold Coast harbor town an hour from Manhattan, with the water, the parks, and that one-of-a-kind church on the hill.
