The settlers laid out a Common south of Clapboard Hill, built the area's first schoolhouse there in 1703, and in 1711 raised the first meeting house of the West Parish of Fairfield — the religious society that has continued unbroken for more than three centuries as the Green's Farms Congregational Church, today in its 1853 meeting house on Hillandale Road. The Bankside settlement was renamed Green's Farms in 1732 in honor of John Green, its largest landholder, and Frost Point still carries Daniel Frost's name. During the Revolutionary War, British troops raided the parish and burned the meeting house along with houses and barns; Deacon Ebenezer Jesup saved the church's communion service by hiding it in his well, the congregation met in private homes for nearly ten years, and a new church rose in 1789 — the community rebuilding rather than scattering.
Through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Greens Farms grew as an agricultural and maritime community on the Long Island Sound. Salt marshes and tidal creeks shaped daily life; farmers shipped onions, potatoes, and other crops down the coast, and the railroad later tied the shoreline to New York markets. By the mid-twentieth century, suburbanization reshaped the landscape, with farmland giving way to neighborhoods and commuter rail, yet the historic church, the old Common, and the stone walls preserved the memory of the colonial settlement. Greens Farms became a quiet, affluent shoreline section of Westport that never lost sight of its founding as Machamux.
Why People Visit Greens Farms Connecticut
- Explore Sherwood Island State Park, Connecticut's first state park — 238 acres of beach, salt marsh, and woodland on Long Island Sound, with swimming, fishing, and birdwatching.
- Find the Machamux Boulder on the old Common at Green's Farms Road near Morningside Drive, the monument marking the original 1648 settlement.
- See the Green's Farms Congregational Church, the parish society's 1853 meeting house on Hillandale Road carrying a continuous history since 1711.
- Drive Beachside Avenue past historic shoreline estates, with the Sound on one side and salt marsh on the other.
- Walk the quiet shoreline lanes around Frost Point — named for Bankside Farmer Daniel Frost — and the marsh edges of Sasco Creek.
- Catch the Metro-North New Haven Line at Greens Farms Station for a commuter-rail glimpse of the neighborhood's daily rhythm between New York and the Connecticut shoreline.
