Nichols Farms is a historic area within the town of Trumbull, Connecticut. The Nichols Farms Historic District, which encompasses part of the area, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Originally home to the Paugusset people, the Nichols area was colonized by the English during the Great Migration of the 1630s as a part of the coastal settlement of Stratford. The first English settlements followed soon after settlement of the mother-town in 1639.
The area was governed by Stratford for eighty six years before a separate village was organized in 1725. Hence, all of Nichols Farms early public records are intermingled with and identified as Stratford records.
The early English settlers named Nichols after the family who maintained a large farm in its center. It was first organized as the village of Unity in 1725. The village of Unity (later called North Stratford) continued for seventy-two years before the privileges of a town were granted in 1797.
NRHP listing and buildings
The Nichols Farms Historic District was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 20, 1987, with reference number 87001392, and included , 81 contributing buildings, one contributing site and one contributing object. The buildings listed on the registry are located close to the green with addresses of Center Road, 1681-1944 Huntington Turnpike, 5-34 Priscilla Place and 30-172 Shelton Road. The 81 buildings are mostly private residences situated on two main roads in a village setting. They represent all of the periods of Connecticut domestic architecture from the early 18th century to the present.
Land use and development
In 1661, the Stratford selectmen voted to allow all inhabitants the liberty of taking up a whole division of land anywhere they could find fit planting ground as long as it was not within two miles (3 km) of the town meeting house, and they were prohibited from making it their dwelling place without consent. Elder Phillip Groves, Captain William Curtiss and Lt. Joseph Judson, early farmers in Nichols Farms, were named to a committee to lay out the land as they saw fit. The common land in Nichols Farms was divided to individuals beginning in 1670 as a part of the three-mile or woods division, and continued up to 1800.
Agriculture
Mischa Hill, located in the geographic center of Nichols Farms, was first called Lt. Joseph Judson's Farm or Old Farm in the land records. It was the first area within Trumbull to be farmed and settled by English colonists. The first landowners were among the first settlers to arrive at Stratford namely; Richard Booth, Zachariah Bostick, Lt. Paul Brinsmaid, John Curtiss, Benjamin Curtiss, Joseph Curtiss, Captain William Curtiss, Ebenezer Curtiss, Zachariah Curtiss, Joseph Fairchild, Elder Philip Groves, Mr. Joseph Hawley (Captain), Samuel Hawley, Ephraim Hawley, Lt. Joseph Judson, Jeremiah Judson, Isaac Judson, Caleb Nichols, Abraham Nichols, Samuel Uffoot and Reverend Zachariah Walker.
Lt. Joseph Judson, Sgt. Jeremiah Judson and Joseph Curtiss established their farms on Mischa Hill before 1658, the year in which they were elected as freemen by the legislature of the Connecticut Colony. To be elected as a freeman at the time, an individual had to own real property in his own name.
Religious rift
In the 1660s, Lt. Joseph Judson disagreed with the majority in town, as he and others tried to introduce the half way covenant. In 1672, Judson obtained permission from then Governor John Winthrop, Jr. to remove with other families and settle the new town of Woodbury. He abandoned his farm in Nichols Farms. In 1688, others like Caleb Nichols removed to Woodbury and in the same year, John Curtiss gifted his farm on Mischa Hill to his son Benjamin and removed there as well. After Judson abandoned his farm, it became commonly called Old Farm.
Abraham Nichols
Abraham Nichols was believed to have made the first permanent settlement within Trumbull around 1690 or 1700, depending on the source, and that others soon followed venturing into the wilderness to establish mills, churches, and schools. Abraham Nichols landholdings were said to total , with much of it remaining in the Nichols family for more than two centuries. The last of the line was Florence Nichols, who married George Woods in 1903. Soon after their deaths in 1973 and 1972, respectively, the property was deeded to the Nichols Methodist Church.