Stratford, Connecticut - Brief History

The last town in Fairfield county, bordered by Bridgeport on its west, on the north by Trumbull and Shelton and by Milford on the east is Stratford. This town was founded in 1639 by Puritans, located on the Long Island Sound by the Housatonic River.
Puritan leader, Reverend Adam Blakeman, William Beardsley and a group of families had arrived in Connecticut from England. They came to the new land seeking, like most before them, religious freedom. Some of the Stratford settlers were from families who had first moved from England to the Netherlands to seek religious freedom, like their predecessors on the Mayflower, and decided to come to the New World.
Like other Puritan (or Pilgrim) towns founded during this time, early Stratford was a place where church leadership and town leadership were both united under the pastor of the church, in this case Reverend Blakeman. The goal of these communities was to create perfect outposts of religious idealism where the wilderness would separate them from the interference of kings, parliaments, or any other secular authority.
Blakeman ruled Stratford until his death in 1665, but as the second generation of Stratford grew up many of the children rejected what they perceived as the exceptional austerity of the town's founders. This and later generations sought to change the religious dictums of their elders, and the utopian nature of Stratford and similar communities was gradually replaced with more standard colonial administration. By the late 1600s, the Connecticut government had assumed political control over Stratford.
Many descendants of the original founding Puritan families remain in Stratford today after over 350 years; for centuries they often intermarried within the original small group of 17th century Pilgrim families. Despite its Puritan origins, Stratford was the site of the first "Anglican" church in Connecticut, founded in 1707 and ministered by the Rev. Dr.Samuel Johnson (1696-1772)" Settlers from Stratford went on to found other American cities and towns, including Newark, New Jersey, established in 1666 by members of the Stratford founding families who believed the town's religious purity had been compromised by the changes after Blakeman's death. Other towns such as Cambria, New York (now Lockport, New York) were founded or expanded around new churches by Stratford descendants taking part in the westward migration. U.S. President Gerald Ford was a descendant of one of the Stratford founding families, that was led by William Judson.

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