History of Old Saybrook, Connecticut, USA

Old Saybrook, Middlesex, Connecticut, USA

Anna Louise James was the daughter of a Virginia plantation slave who escaped to Connecticut. She grew up in Old Saybrook and, in 1908, she became the first African American woman to graduate from the Brooklyn College of Pharmacy in New York. She owned and operated James Pharmacy in Old Saybrook until 1967.

Old Saybrook, located at the mouth of the Connecticut River, was the home of Algonquin Nehantic Indians for years before Europeans arrived...

While not the oldest town in Connecticut, Old Saybrook is the oldest town on the Shoreline as well as the oldest English town name in Connecticut. The fort was the earliest in the Connecticut Colony and the Gardiner’s son, David, was born at Fort Saybrook in 1636--the first child of European parents born in Connecticut.

As Saybrook grew, settlers moved further and further away from the original settlement and eventually they received permission to form their own parishes so that they would not have to travel so far on Sundays to attend church services. As these outlaying parishes grew, they separated from Saybrook and became the present day towns of Lyme, Old Lyme, Westbrook, Chester, Essex and Deep River...
oldsaybrookct.gov