Stamford, Connecticut was inhabited by Siwanoy Native Americans, prior to European colonization beginning in the mid-17th century. Stamford grew rapidly due to industrialization in the late-19th and early-20th century, and continued to grow rapidly throughout much of the mid-20th century. During the late-20th century, Stamford underwent a period of urban renewal which saw much redevelopment in its downtown. Stamford's population has continued to grow throughout the 21st century, with redevelopments in its downtown and the South End.
Colonial history
Stamford was known as Rippowam by the Siwanoy Native American inhabitants to the region, and the very first European settlers to the area also referred to it that way. On July 1, 1640, Captain Turner of the New Haven Colony signed an agreement to purchase the land comprising present-day Stamford, Darien, western New Canaan, and Pound Ridge and Bedford in present-day New York with Siwanoy Sagamores Wascussee and Ponus. The land was acquired by the New Haven colony for 12 coats, 12 hoes, 12 hatchets, 12 glass mirrors, 12 knives, two kettles, and four fathoms of white wampum. However, the Siwanoy parties to the agreement may not have fully understood the agreement, as that they did not buy nor sell land, and linguistic differences may have prevented them from fully understanding the deal. The deed was modified in 1655, 1662, and 1701, with each modification adding payments to the descendants of Ponus, but did not provide any clarifications as to the land deal itself.
The first European colonists, Reverent Richard Denton of Wethersfield and his family, settled the area in mid-May 1641. Later on in the spring, 29 Puritan families from Wethersfield moved to the area. The group had formed "The Rippowam Company" on October 19, 1640, to purchase the area from the New Haven Colony, and to settle it under the New Haven Colony's jurisdiction. The name of the settlement was changed to Stamford on April 6, 1642, after the town in Lincolnshire, England, where more than 80% of New England's original English settlers hailed from. Denton and his family, alongside 17 other families, would leave Stamford for Hempstead, on Long Island, in 1644.
In 1642, Captain John Underhill settled in Stamford and the following year represented the town in the New Haven Colony General Court.
Stamford was included in the creation of a New Haven confederation called the United Colonies of New England, alongside New Haven, Guilford, Milford, as well as Southold on Long Island. Shortly after the restoration of Charles II of England, in a session of the Connecticut General Court held on October 9, 1662, the former New Haven "plantations" of Stanford (sic), Greenwich, Guilford, and even Southold were to be recognized as Connecticut Colony towns with constables sworn in.
During the 1640s, a mill was built on the Rippowam River, and a wooden meeting house was built. The first public schoolhouse was built in Stamford in 1671, and has been described by a local historian as a "crude, unheated wooden structure only ten or twelve feet square". It was built when settlers tore down their original meeting house, which they had outgrown after three decades, and used some of the timbers to put up a school near the Old Town Hall on Atlantic Square. On the nearby common they built a new meeting house, which also served as the Congregational church.
As Stamford expanded throughout the late 17th century, people settled farther and farther from the settlement's center, and had to travel farther to access public services. The predecessor to the Boston Post Road, originally called King's Highway or County Road, was built in 1673. As a result, in 1680, people who settled in the far northern reaches of Stamford split off into the town of Bedford. A treaty in 1683 between Connecticut and New York set an agreed-upon border north of Stamford's main road, resulting in part of the settlement falling under New York's jurisdiction.
Following the resignation of local Reverend John Bishop, Reverend John Davenport assumed the role of Stamford's spiritual leader in 1694. Davenport, who ruled until his death in February 1731, governed in a conservative style, and under his rule, Stamford accepted few new inhabitants. Following Davenport's death, the Congregational Church lost control over local town meetings, and in 1737, the Canaan and Middlesex Parishes split off from Stamford to form new settlements. Further religious fractures emerged in subsequent years with the establishment of an Anglican church in Stamford in 1742, Baptist churches in 1773 and 1790, a Methodist church in 1788, and a New Light preacher resulting from the First Great Awakening.