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Bankside Farmers

The Bankside Farmers were a group of five men who established themselves along the Long Island Sound south of Fairfield, Connecticut, in 1648. The area is now known as Greens Farms, a section of Westport, Connecticut.

The map is a print reproduction of a hand-drawn map, within the cover of the book "Greens Farms Connecticut: The Old West Parish" by author George Penfield Jennings, self-styled "Squire of Elmstead" (published 1933 by The Congregational Society of Greens Farms). The map, which is only part of a larger map not in the picture, depicts the (theoretical) land claims of the Bankside farmers, overlaid with contemporary landmarks. Five long, thin, partially diagonal rectangles depict these land claims, starting from the Long Island Sound and ending at an unclear border not far inland. There are names of the Bankside Farmers in each rectangle, from left to right (West to East) these names are: Francis Andrews, John Green, Thomas Newton (abbreviated as Thos. Newton), Henry Gray, and Daniel Frost (abbreviated as Dan'l Frost). The rectangles are all intersected by a road called Beachside Avenue, and the rectangle of Francis Andrews is intersected by Maple Lane, which connects into Beachside Avenue. On the left and rightmost bottom corners of the respective rectangles, two landmarks are present. The first, slightly to the left of Francis Andrews' plot is Burial Hill, depicted by a small square, and is connected to Burial Hill Road, which terminates into Beachside Avenue. In the rightmost square of Daniel Frost, intersecting his plot is Frost Point, which demarked by a slight jutting out of the shoreline. Further right (East) up the coast, a small distance from the plots is Dennies Point. In the top left of the picture, several markers indicate more roads, a church, a school, and a hill, the exact names of which have been cut off by the picture.
Old map showing Bankside Farmers

They were: Thomas Newton, Henry Gray, John Green, Daniel Frost and Francis Andrews.[1]

Daniel Frost was born January 17, 1613, in Nottingham, England, and died February 23, 1682, in Fairfield. A small coastal promontory, Frost Point, is named for Daniel Frost.

Henry Gray was born November 23, 1617, in London, England. He worked as a tailor with his elder brother William in London for a time. He arrived in New England in 1639. He married Daniel Frost's sister Lydia in Boston, Massachusetts, in September 1639. He came to Fairfield in 1640 and was a deputy from Fairfield from 1642-43. He died in 1658. Two roads in the area are named for him: Gray's Farm Road and Gray Lane.

Greens Farms is named for John Green.

This group of early settlers adopted the name "Bankside" to commemorate the original Bankside located in London, England, the district in which several of them had previously resided.

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References

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  1. ^ Josephine C. Frost (1912). The Frost genealogy: descendants of William Frost of Oyster Bay, New York : showing connections never before published with the Winthrop, Underhill, Feke, Bowne and Wickes families. F.H. Hitchcock. p. 391. Retrieved 18 November 2011.
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