The Paugussett who lived along the Housatonic called this shore Cupheag — "place of shelter." In 1639 a group of Puritan families led by the Reverend Adam Blakeman settled at the river's mouth, and in 1643 the town was formally named Stratford, for Shakespeare's Stratford-upon-Avon in England. For its first two centuries Stratford lived off the water: oystering and shipbuilding on the Housatonic, wharves and fishing boats, the 1750 Georgian house of Captain David Judson still standing as a reminder of the colonial harbor town.
Today Stratford is a Connecticut shoreline town in the Bridgeport metro, where colonial harbor history meets twentieth-century aviation. Boothe Memorial Park spreads its salvaged history across 32 acres above the river, Stratford Point Light still marks the mouth of the Housatonic, and the Lordship beaches face out onto Long Island Sound. Our Stratford designs gather that identity into wearable form — the oyster shell, the lighthouse, the harbor, the Sound. From a 1639 oyster harbor to the birthplace of the American helicopter — wear a little of Stratford's Connecticut history.
Why People Visit Stratford Connecticut
Stratford draws visitors with a rare mix of colonial harbor history, Long Island Sound shoreline, and aviation heritage. Travelers find it both a 1639 oyster town with a lighthouse and beaches and the birthplace of the American helicopter, with the quiet, layered character of the Connecticut shore. It is historic, maritime, and unmistakably New England.
