Photo Courtesy of Fairfield Museum and HIstory Center

July 7, 1779, three years and three days after the colonists declared their independence, the British anchored a fleet of warships off the coast of Fairfield. They waited until the fog lifted and then came ashore to ravage the town and abuse the women. It is a day that lives in infamy in the annals of Fairfield history. Yet, it is also a date that goes by each year without notice. No parade. No ceremony. No mention in the newspapers. It is, for most of us, forgotten.

Well before that fateful day, Gold Selleck Silliman, a Militia General whose house still stands at 506 Jennings Road, had complained that warships cruising Long Island Sound were a threat to all the coastal villages. As a result, about 1,400 Connecticut men enlisted in the regular army and were assigned to guard the entire New England coast.

Silliman fought in the battles of Long Island, Harlem Heights, and White Plains. Then on April 25, 1777, the British landed in Norwalk and marched to Danbury. Now Brigadier General Silliman, with 500 militiamen, waited for the enemy to return and when the British arrived at the Saugatuck River the waiting militia prevented them from crossing the bridge. Not easily discouraged, the British forded up river and headed toward Fairfield. But General Sillimans men attacked them from the rear. The British retreated to Compo Beach where waiting ships sailed them to Long Island. For the time being, Fairfield had been saved.

Photo Courtesy of Fairfield Museum and HIstory Center

Then, on May 6, 1779, terror struck Sillimans family while they slept. Eight Tories broke into their home and ordered Silliman and his son William to come with them. The two were taken across to Long Island. William was soon released, but Silliman was transported to New York City and was not returned to Fairfield until a year later. (During that year, his wife, Mary Fish Silliman, tried to secure his release. At one point, she hired local thugs to go across the Sound to capture a well-known judge on Long Island for ransom. They succeeded and brought him to her house where he stayed, complaining the entire time, until his presence became unbearable and she had him sent somewhere else. When his capture did not help to release her husband, she appealed personally to the Governor.)

During Sillimans absence, however, Mary and the entire town faced another attack. From her home on Jennings Road, Mrs. Silliman saw the British war ships anchored off Fairfield on July 7, 1779. At around four in the afternoon, approximately 1,600 troops landed at McKenzies Point (Sasco Beach). Cannons from Grover Hill and Round Hill were fired as a warning to alert the town. Sam Rowland, a ten-year-old, ran across from his house to Trinity Episcopal Church (which was located next to where the YMCA is today). From the steeple, he watched the British marching up the beach towards town.

Because the men of Fairfield were out on patrol or fighting elsewhere, most of the remaining residents were women, children, and the elderly. They quickly loaded wagons and hurried to friends and relatives who lived in the hills and beyond. Others remained, not believing the British would harm them.

The British, under the leadership of General William Tryon, marched up Beach Road. One Fairfield resident, Mrs. Jonathan Bulkley, had a Loyalist brother, George Hoyt. She was promised that her house and those of her neighbors along Beach Road would not be harmed. (Attempts were made to burn them, but scouts following the enemy put out the fires.) Those few homes along Beach Road and the Rowland House at 952 Old Post Road were spared, giving modern day Fairfielders a small glimpse of what homes here looked like before the burning.

Photo Courtesy of Fairfield Museum and HIstory Center

At the Burr Homestead, Eunice Burr, wife of the most important man in town, Thaddeus Burr, didnt believe her house would be stormed or that she would be harmed because General Tryon had been a guest of the Burrs. However, soldiers broke in many times.

Mrs. Burr gave a deposition on August 2, 1779 describing what had happened to her: [A] pack of the most barbarous ruffians came rushing into the house, and repeatedly accosted me with, you Dam [sic] Rebel where is your husband, he is a selectmanat the same time stripping me of my buckles, taring [sic] down the curtains of my bed, breaking the frame of my dressing glass, pulling out the draws of my table

A British officer who entered demanded any weapons she had. She gave him those she could find and told him about the ruffians. He ordered them out, but as soon as he left, more entered, demanding cider and breaking china. Finally, General Tryon arrived and confiscated all the house deeds. When he left, another group appeared. In her deposition she wrote, I drew back to the yard, the only shelter that I had, and there committed myself to God Hours later Tryon returned, and in a show of compassion, assigned two sentries to guard her door and gave her a note stating the house was to be spared.

Eventually, the British retreated, though we know that the next day that about eight Southport homes and outbuildings were also burned.
Nearly a hundred structures were burned. Those Fairfielders who sought safety in Greenfield Hill watched in horror as the flames and smoke rose through a fierce thunder and lightning storm. When they returned to town the next day, 97 homes, 67 barns, 48 stores, two schools, a courthouse (Town Hall), two meeting houses (Congregational and Trinity Churches), and the county jail lay in ruins. Fairfield was destroyed.

Residents who lost their homes were awarded the choice of money or an equivalent value of land from the 500,000 acres of land owned by Connecticut in what today is part of Ohio, and was known as the Western Addition. Many took the latter option and never returned. Others remained and rebuilt. Yet, even a decade later, things had not returned to normal. President Washington came through Fairfield in 1789 and wrote in his diary: [T]he destructive evidences of British cruelty are yet visible both in Norwalk and Fairfield; as there are the chimneys of many burnt houses standing in them yet.

The only houses standing today in the Old Post Road Historic District from before July 7, 1779 are 952 Old Post Road and 249, 289, 303, and 349 Beach Road (the homes that were saved by Mrs. Buckley). Several others, like 205 Beach Road may have been partially burned and were rebuilt. Number 543 Old Post Road was rebuilt in 1783, and Benson House (at 131 South Benson Road) was burned and rebuilt in 1779. The Sun Tavern was rebuilt in 1780, and the Burr Homestead was rebuilt in 1790.

Perhaps, as summer rolls around each year, Fairfielders will now reflect on all that occurred here on that date. It is worth remembering and recognizing those who fought and suffered so we would remain independent from British control.