Fairfield was founded in September 1639 by Roger Ludlow, the English lawyer who months earlier had been principal drafter of the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut — adopted January 14, 1639, and often called the first written constitution in the colonies. Ludlow rode southwest from Windsor and laid out his new town on four squares — one for himself, one for the minister, one for civic buildings, one for a town common — on coastal land its native people called Uncoway, purchased from the Paugussett-related bands who had farmed and fished this shore for centuries; their descendants remain. Two years earlier the Pequot War had ended near here at the Great Swamp in present-day Southport — a final defeat in which many Pequot people were killed — and the town’s founding followed in its wake. The name the settlers chose described what they saw: fair fields, the broad salt meadows along the Sound.
So Fairfield gathers a first constitution, four colonial squares, a world-famous onion, a rebuilt green, a haunted lighthouse, and four miles of Sound shore into one town — and our Fairfield designs gather that into wearable form. Whether Fairfield is your hometown, your beach, the green you crossed a thousand times, or the town you still mean to come back to, wear the history. Rebuilding since 1779, on the Sound since 1639.
Why People Visit Fairfield Connecticut
Fairfield offers a deep colonial history, a National Register town green, the Federal-era Burr Mansion and surrounding streetscape, the Greenfield Hill village preserved intact from before the Revolution, an offshore lighthouse, four miles of Sound beaches, and the original Boston Post Road running through the middle of it all. Visitors come for the museum and the green, the Federal architecture along Beach Road, the Greenfield Hill drive in apple season, the Pequot Library, Jennings Beach in summer, and the simple shoreline pleasures of a town that was founded by the lawyer who wrote America's first constitution and rebuilt itself after the British burned it down. It is layered, walkable, and very Connecticut.
