Stonington

Variant name of place

Stoneing Town; Stonington Indian Town; Stoningtown

Geographic position

41.3650° N, 71.9067° W

Sources

Flowers, Marcia. “History.” Eastern Pequot Tribal Nation. http://www.easternpequottribalnation.com/history.html; “The History of Stonington Borough.” Stonington, Connecticut. http://www.stoningtonboroughct.com/history.shtml; Trumbull, James. The Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut (1636-1776), 1852. Geo coordinates at https://www.google.com/#q=geographic+coordinates+of+stonington+ct.

General note

Stonington is a town on the Long Island Sound by the Pawcatuck River in the southeastern corner of Connecticut. Before colonists arrived, the Algonquin-speaking Pequots who originally inhabited the area referred to it as “Mistack.” In 1649, however, Europeans opened a trading house near the Pawcatuck, and in 1666 they named the town Stonington. Relations between the Pequots and colonists were tense, especially because of the 1637 massacre of Pequot Indians at nearby Mystic, CT. Eventually, settlers set aside North Stonington for the Pequots, establishing one of the earliest Indian reservations that the Pequots have continually occupied since 1670. The town grew in the years leading up to the Revolution as a result of the shipbuilding and fishing industries. Occom visited Stonington to preach, often to crowds of Pequots in North Stonington, which became its own town in 1724. Its high Pequot population led some to call North Stonington “Stonington Indian Town.” Occom was acquainted with Joseph Fish, a Congregationalist minister, who in the 1760s opened a school for local Pequots and Narragansetts in Stonington. Moor’s alumni John Shattock Jr. and Jacob Fowler both spent time as schoolmasters there. During the Revolutionary War, Stonington was the site where patriots successfully deterred two British naval attacks. Following the war, many Stonington Pequots, along with other New England tribes, settled in Brothertown, in central New York.