North Stonington, Connecticut North Stonington, Connecticut Official seal of North Stonington, Connecticut North Stonington is a town in New London County, Connecticut, United States.
The populace was 5,297 at the 2010 census. North Stonington was split off from Stonington in 1724.
North Stonington Village Historic District Route 2, Main Street, Wyassup, Babcock, Caswell, and Rocky Hollow Roads (added April 17, 1983) Samuel Miner House north of North Stonington off Route 2 on Hewitt Road (added July 18, 1976) The territory of North Stonington is positioned at the southeast corner of the state of Connecticut.
The first white pioneer kept a number of their names for the town's chief geological features, including the town's chief water course of Shunock Brook, as well as Assekonk Swamp and Wintechog and Cossaduck hills.
For much of the 17th century, North Stonington was thinly populated by the Pequots and European settlers.
The first pioneer to North Stonington were Ezekiel Main and Jeremiah Burch in 1667, who established settlements in the areas which became the village of North Stonington and Clark's Falls, in the order given.
In 1768, a weekly stagecoach was opened between Norwich and Providence via North Stonington and Pawcatuck; this road became the Norwich-Westerly Road, today known as Route 2.
The reluctance of pioneer to walk the great distance every Sunday to the Road Church in Stonington led to the establishment of a northern Congregational society in 1717, in which the northern part of Stonington aimed to build its own meeting home.
This "North Society" defined a boundary line that is identical to the border today between North Stonington and Stonington, although disagreements about the establishment of this line and the locale of the northern meeting home lasted until 1723 and required the colonial assembly's intervention a several times.
In 1724, North Stonington attained its name by decree of the Connecticut Assembly.
One of the chief results of this revivalist boss was the rapid expansion of the Baptist Church in America, and North Stonington became a bastion of this denomination in Connecticut.
This was the first Baptist church for both Stonington and North Stonington; today it is positioned at Pendleton Hill in the town's northeastern corner, but the initial building sat a short distance to the south.
The third Baptist Church was established in 1828 to serve the quickly growing populace of millworkers in the village of North Stonington.
It is difficult to determine the precise number of townspeople who joined the fight, given that North Stonington still formed part of Stonington and clerks did not distinguish between the two locales.
As early as the first part of the 18th century first- and second-generation farmers in North Stonington began harnessing the power of the town's rivers and streams to establish grist mills and sawmills.
Smaller communities, with their own churches, postal services, mills, and stores, emerged in Burch's Falls (renamed Clark's Falls in the 1860s) and Laurel Glen, both in the easterly end of town, and Ashwillet and Pendleton Hill (known as Pauchunganuc until the 1840s), positioned in the order given in the northwestern and northeastern corners of the town.
Individual mills also emerged throughout the town to meet the grain and lumber milling needs of small-town communities at a distance from the five suburbs inside the town.
By the early part of the 19th century North Stonington's inhabitants began to regard themselves as possessing a character separate from the communities of the southern part of the town to which they were still connected.
Efforts by the southern communities from the late 18th century to build a number of mostly expensive assembly projects along the coastline, such as a new road from Stonington Borough to Mystic and a bridge over Lambert's Cove, at first led inhabitants of the northern end of the town to oppose budgeting monies for these projects, and eventually caused the northerners to secede and form their own town.
At a town hall meeting at Stonington's Road Church in April 1807, a small majority of voters decided for division, using the old dividing line between the North and South societies of the Congregationalist Church as the demarcation line.
The Assembly, which met the following month, allowed the new town's independence, but did not endorse the town's proposed new name of Jefferson, and instead directed that the town would be titled "North Stonington", citing as justification that for almost a century the northern part of Stonington had been known by that name.
We do not know the reason why the country's third president then midway through his second term was so prominent among North Stonington residents, although perhaps Jefferson's enhance criticism of the Congregational Church's domination of politics and religion in Connecticut earned him the loyalty of the small-town Baptist community, which perhaps regarded him as a champion of their rights in a state that still enshrined preferential rights to the Congregational Church.
An inventory of the town's taxable assets in the following year, 1808, provides a snapshot of the town's economic profile.
At the same time, this same inventory shows the burgeoning affluence in the town, a reflection of the town's agricultural richness and burgeoning mill activity.
North Stonington and its older sister Stonington played an enthusiastic part in the War of 1812, even if the war itself was deeply unpopular in Connecticut and elsewhere in New England.
During the war North Stonington resident Lieutenant Colonel William Randall, the great-grandson of initial settler John Randall, commanded the 30th regiment of Connecticut militia, which was mobilized twice.
The first time was in June 1813, when Randall's regiment which consisted of about 300 men, equally from Stonington and North Stonington force-marched overnight in driving precipitation to Groton to help defend the town/city against a feared landing by British naval forces.
The 30th Regiment returned to the colors again in August 1814, when a squadron of British warships bombarded Stonington Borough in preparation for a raid on the town.
Over the next century, the Wheelers left their mark on the town through a number of legacies including providing large donations to the Congregational Church and the school system.
Wheeler's son Dwight donated one of the family's stores to turn into the town hall in 1904 (today this building is the Old Town Hall).
After the Civil War Main returned to North Stonington and bought one of Dudley Wheeler's stores in Milltown; Main's home today homes the North Stonington Historical Society.
Almost as soon as the town established itself as a commercial center larger, even, than Westerly, however, it was quickly bypassed by the effects of the Industrial Revolution, which favored larger suburbs astride similarly larger rivers to erect huge mills.
North Stonington's populace plummeted from the late 1830s as citizens left to work in Westerly and Norwich.
Adding to North Stonington's diminish in populace was that an increasing number of the town's youth were joining the wave of migrants heading west to try their fortunes on the frontier.
Out-migration through the late 19th and early 20th centuries ensured that the town's populace would remain on a gradual, downward slope, despite the fact that the families still tended to be large.
While men from North Stonington joined a several Connecticut regiments amid the Civil War, the best-known of these was the 21st Regiment of Connecticut Volunteers because its "G" business consisted completely of North Stonington residents.
Hubbel, who enlisted in the regiment from North Stonington, earned the Medal of Honor for capturing a large number of Confederate soldiers while dominant a small raiding party in 1864.
The Civil War created a large market for woolen products for the Army, dominant to a temporary resurgence in foundry activity in North Stonington.
A several other mills in Milltown (North Stonington village) and Laurel Glen railwayuntil the early part of the 20th century.
After the Civil War, the populace of North Stonington like most of non-urban New England continued to dwindle, so that by 1910, after just over a century since its incorporation, the number of inhabitants stood at only 1,100, less than two-fifths than at the town's height amid the foundry era.
As citizens left the town, territory prices steadily deflated, enabling some farmers with means to buy up large tracts throughout North Stonington and adjoining towns.
One such territory baron and famous town character, Lafayette Main, amassed such large holdings through the end of town (as well in adjoining towns) that when asked how many acres he owned, would reply, "I really don't know.
Some of the citizens who left North Stonington amid this era went on to turn into leading people elsewhere in New England.
In the early 20th century progress appeared to re-stitch the town economically with the outer world, first in 1906 in the form of a street car line that traversed North Stonington on its way from Westerly to Norwich.
The establishment of paved highways through the town in the 1920s and 1930s laid the foundation for the rapid populace growth and dramatic economic shifts wrought after World War II in North Stonington and elsewhere in New London County.
During the 1950s and 1960s, North Stonington became a bedroom improve for the postwar defense trade and military improve of southeastern Connecticut, including such companies as Electric Boat, Pfizer, and Underwater Sound Laboratory.
The town became readily accessible to anywhere in late 1964, when Interstate 95 was assembled and two exits were opened in North Stonington.
School populace since then has mirrored that of the town's gradual increase, and the graduating class of 2006 was 65, although Wheeler remains one of the smallest high schools in Connecticut.
The town's rapid residentiary expansion led to the evolution in 1963 of planning and zoning restrictions and guidelines as people became increasingly anxious about the potential for overdevelopment destroying the non-urban nature of the town.
Population expansion in the past thirty years has continued, but at nowhere near the break-neck pace of the 1950s and 1960s; today, the chief challenge to preserving North Stonington's historically non-urban character comes less from housing subdivisions and more from big commercial evolution ideas.
The town, because of its access to I-95, non-urban charm, and after 1992 its adjacency to the Mashantucket casino in the adjoining town of Ledyard, has thriving various would-be developers who have advanced as-yet unsuccessful entertainment park schemes for the town.
North Stonington inhabitants and visitors cherish the town for its beauty and historic value.
Town of North Stonington, CT.
"Profile of General Population and Housing Characteristics: 2010 Demographic Profile Data (DP-1): North Stonington town, New London County, Connecticut".
Town of North Stonington official website
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Towns in New London County, Connecticut - North Stonington, Connecticut - Towns in Connecticut
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