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.
The story of Machamux remains central to the neighborhood's identity. The Common that the Bankside Farmers laid out survives as a small landscaped park on Green's Farms Road, marked by the Machamux Boulder — a monument to the original 1648 settlement. Stories passed down through generations recall the shoreline's abundance of clams and oysters, the long unbroken life of the parish, and the wartime resilience that rebuilt the church after the Revolutionary raid. Fact and memory braid together along this coast, anchoring Greens Farms in more than three centuries of Connecticut history.
Why People Visit Greens Farms Connecticut
Greens Farms offers calm beaches, a nature preserve, and village charm steeped in colonial history. Visitors come for the quiet shoreline, the first-state-park beach at Sherwood Island, and the sense of a place that has held its name and its character since 1648. It is a subtle, restful corner of coastal Connecticut, balanced between the salt marsh and three and a half centuries of heritage.
