GREENWICH, a township of Fairfield county, Connecticut, U.S.A., on Long
Island Sound, in the extreme S.W. part of the state, about 28 m. N.E. of
New York City. It contains a borough of the same name and the villages
of Cos Cob, Riverside and Sound Beach, all served by the New York, New
Haven & Hartford Railway; the township has steamboat and electric
railway connexions with New York City. Pop. of the township (1900)
12,172, of whom 3271 were foreign-born; (1910) 16,463; of the borough
(1910) 3886. Greenwich is a summer resort, principally for New Yorkers.
Among the residents have been Edwin Thomas Booth, John Henry Twachtman,
the landscape painter, and Henry Osborne Havemeyer (1847-1907), founder
of the American Sugar Company. There are several fine churches in the
township; of one in Sound Beach the Rev. William H. H. Murray
(1840-1904), called "Adirondack Murray," from his _Camp Life in the
Adirondack Mountains_ (1868), was once pastor. In the borough are a
public library, Greenwich Academy (1827; co-educational), the Brunswick
School for boys (1901), with which Betts Academy of Stamford was united
in 1908, and a hospital. The principal manufactures are belting,
woollens, tinners' hardware, iron and gasolene motors. Oysters are
shipped from Greenwich. The first settlers came from the New Haven
Colony in 1640; but the Dutch, on account of the exploration of Long
Island Sound by Adrian Blok in 1614, laid claim to Greenwich, and as New
Haven did nothing to assist the settlers, they consented to union with
New Netherland in 1642. Greenwich then became a Dutch manor. By a treaty
of 1650, which fixed the boundary between New Netherland and the New
Haven Colony, the Dutch relinquished their claim to Greenwich, but the
inhabitants of the town refused to submit to the New Haven Colony until
October 1656. Six years later Greenwich was one of the first towns of
the New Haven Colony to submit to Connecticut. The township suffered
severely during the War of Independence on account of the frequent
quartering of American troops within its borders, the depredations of
bands of lawless men after the occupation of New York by the British in
1778 and its invasion by the British in 1779 (February 25) and 1781
(December 5). There was also a strong loyalist sentiment. On the old
post-road in Greenwich is the inn, built about 1729, at which Israel
Putnam was surprised in February 1779 by a force under General Tryon;
according to tradition he escaped by riding down a flight of steep stone
steps. The inn was purchased in 1901 by the Daughters of the American
Revolution, who restored it and made it a Putnam Memorial. The township
government of Greenwich was instituted in the colonial period. The
borough of Greenwich was incorporated in 1858.
See D. M. Mead, _History of the Town of Greenwich_ (New York, 1857).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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