The early history was rendered unquiet at times by wars with the Indians, the chief of which were the Pequot War in 1637, and King Philip's War in 16 75-7 6; and for better combining against these enemies, Massachusetts, with Connecticut, New Haven and New Plymouth, formed a confederacy in 1643, considered the prototype of the larger union of the colonies which conducted the War of American Independence (1 7758 3).
Norwich was settled in 1659 by colonists from Saybrook under the leadership of Captain John Mason (1600-1672), who had crushed the power of the Pequot Indians in Connecticut in 1637, and the Rev. James Fitch (1622-1702), who became a missionary to the Mohegans."
The township has the well-equipped Pequot and Fairfield memorial libraries (the former in the village of Southport, the latter in the village of Fairfield), the Fairfield fresh air home (which cares for between one and two hundred poor children of New York during each summer season), and the Gould home for self-supporting women.
Truck-gardening is an important industry of the township. In the Pequot Swamp within the present Fairfield a force of Pequot Indians was badly defeated in 1637 by some whites, among whom was Roger Ludlow, who, attracted by the country, founded the settlement in 1639 and gave it its present name in 1645.
The Dutch engaged the services of about fifty Englishmen under Captain John Underhill, a hero of the Pequot War, and in 1644 the Indians were defeated in several engagements, but a general peace with them was not established until the 30th of August 1645.
