 In 1775 Israel Putnam, who held a commission from the Colony of Connecticut as a Major General, was plowing a field in Brooklyn Center (near where the library is today) when word reached him of the Battle of Lexington and Concord.Leaving his plow in the field, he rode a relay of horses to reach Boston in only 18 hours, taking command of the rebel forces, and at Breed’s Hill uttering the famous, “Don’t shoot until you see the whites of their eyes!”

Brooklyn Parish in 1786 would be set off from Pomfret and Canterbury to become a town in its own right.In the 1920s and 30s, Edith Kermit Carow, wife of Theodore Roosevelt, operated an old family property as "Mortlake House" – a country inn for vacationing city visitors.