Old Saybrook

Middlesex County · dedicated 1971 · location approximate

SAY-BROOKE Founded November 1635. First English settlement on south shore of New England. Named for Viscount Say and Seale and Robert, Lord Brooke, two of the group of English nobility and gentry who, in 1632, received a patent from Robert, Earl of Warwick, to lands from the Narragansett River to the Pacific Ocean. A fort was established at the mouth of the Connecticut River to protect it for English colonists. First church was organized in 1646 in the fort's Great Hall. Fourth edifice, built 1840, stands opposite. Many nearby towns sprang from Say-Brooke. Site of original colony now called Old Saybrook.

Text transcribed from the cast town markers erected under Connecticut's town historical marker program in the 1970s and early 1980s. Presented as a historical record.

Digital Commonwealth, Boston Public Library

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Marker text: Connecticut Historical Commission town marker program (1970-1983), text as cast on the markers
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