Middlesex County

The Connecticut River organizes Middlesex County. Fort Saybrook rose at its mouth in 1636, and the Saybrook Colony's land later broke into separate towns — Westbrook out of the Oyster River Quarter, Chester out of the northern quarter, Essex out of Potapaug, Old Saybrook incorporated in 1854, and what was left renaming itself Deep River in 1947. Middletown, incorporated in 1650 as Mattabeseck, shed Portland in 1841, Cromwell in 1851 and Middlefield in 1866. Haddam is the only town in Connecticut the river runs through the middle of rather than along. Brownstone and ivory recur: stone was worked at Portland from about 1690 and carried downriver by Clinton-built schooners called brownstoners, while Deep River and Ivoryton in Essex together processed up to ninety percent of the ivory imported into the United States. Yale's Collegiate School began in Rector Abraham Pierson's Killingworth home — now Clinton — moved to Saybrook, and went on to New Haven.