In the seventeenth century, Coleman Street, London, England, was a "faire and large street, on both sides builded with faire houses." John Davenport was the son of Henry and Winnifred Davenport. He was baptized by Richard Eaton, the Vicar of Holy Trinity Church, Coventry, on April 9, 1597.

In 1624, Davenport was elected as Vicar of St. Stephens on Coleman Street, but before he could begin his duties he was charged with Puritanism by King James 1st, which he denied. About 1630 Theophilus Eaton (son of Richard Eaton) took over the house in Swanne Alley (off Coleman St.). Eaton had served as Deputy Govenor of the Eastland Company. This group received a grant of territory from the Council for New England and as "the Governor and Council Massachusetts Bay in New England" on March 4, 1629 received a charter from the Crown.

In November of 1633, John Davenport fled to Amsterdam to escape increasing disapproval of the Crown. Here the group organized their move to the New World. The "group" included John and Elizabeth Davenport, Theophilus Eaton, Anne Eaton, Thomas Yale, Nathaniel Eaton and Mary Eaton and others. The group also included many of the inhabitants of the parish of St. Stephens on Coleman Street such Nathaniel Rove, William Andrews, Henry James Clark, Jasper Crane, Jeremy Dixon, Nicholas Elsey, Francis Hall, Robert Hill, William Ives, George and Lawrence Ward.

Others (probably from the neighborhood, but not members of St. Stephens) who came to the New World with John Davenport included Ezekiel Cheever, Ed Bannister, Richard Beach, Richard Beckley, John Brockett, John Budd, John Cooper, Mathew Hitchcock, Andrew Hull, Andrew Low, Andrew Messenger, Mathew Moulthrop, Robert Newman, Richard Osborn, Edward Patterson, John Reader, and William THORP. The group chartered the Hector of London and on June 26, 1637 arrived in Boston from London.

In August of 1637, Eaton and several others traveled south to view the area around Long Island, Connecticut. Later, many chose to leave for New Haven with Eaton and Davenport.

A copy of the 1641 Brockett map as shown in "the Three Centuries of New Haven 1638-1938" by Rollin G. Osterweis shows The Nine Village Squares of Ancient New Haven". We find William Thorp in Square Three in the year 1641. William Thorp is honored as one of the "Founders of the New Haven Colony". A founder of the New Haven Colony is defined as one of the free planters who assented to the Fundamental Agreement of the New Haven Colony on June 4, 1639.

William Thorp’s estimated year of birth is 1605, most probably in England and the year of death 1679. His wife’s name is recorded as Elizabeth, however, her maiden name is unknown. She was born about 1615 and died on October 9, 1660. This couple had five children, Nathaniel, John, Elizabeth, Samuel and Eleazer. The person that we, the Hearn family, are interested in from this point is their son, John Thorp.

John Thorp, son of William and Elizabeth Thorp, was born July, 1643 in New Haven, Connecticut and died in the year 1720 in Fairfield, Connecticut. He married Hannah Frost about 1679. This couple had two children, John Junior and Samuel. John Senior married again to Mary Meeker Adams Lyons. They also had two children, Peter and Daniel. The person that we, the Hearn family, are interested in from this point is John Thorp Junior, son of John Thorp Senior and Hannah Frost.

The reasonable assumption is made that John Thorp Senior left New Haven, Connecticut and moved to Fairfield, Connecticut, year unknown. as he died in Fairfield in 1720.

It is important to know a little of the history of the area of Old Fairfield, Connecticut and interesting to picture the “way it was” back then, forming a picture in mind of it.

We have learned that in the fall of 1639, Roger Ludow, one of the founders of the colony of Connecticut, led a small group of men, and a large herd of cattle, to the shore of Long Island Sound. At a place known to the local Indians as Unquowa, they then established a settlement that became known as Fairfield, named for the hundreds of acres of salt marsh that bordered the coast.

The founding of Fairfield was not without conflict however, Roger Ludlow had first seen this area in 1637 when as one of a band of settler soldiers, he had pursued a group of Pequot Indians to a swamp on Southport. There, Pequots made a last stand in a brief but bloody war cause by their resistance to settlers expansion into the Pequot’s territory in eastern Connecticut. The battle is commemorated by a monument on the Post Road in Southport.

Although few seventeenth-century dwellings remain standing in Fairfield, evidence of the early settlement of the town is visible to this day in the form of the town’s road system. Roger Ludlow laid out a grid for his new town; today’s Post Road, Old Post Road, Beach Road and South Benson Road, centered on the Meeting House Green, now the Town Green.

On these streets, settlers built their homesteads and the Meeting House, seat of government and place of worship. Around the village was a cluster of common fields where the early settlers raised their crops, grazed livestock and cut timber. Oldfield Road, Benson Road and Unquowa Road were once farm lanes and gave access to these fields.

As the town grew and farmsteads were built outside of the village, more highways radiated from the center to provide access; Pequot Road to Greens Farms, Bronson and Mill Plain Roads to Greenfield, Jennings Road to Holland Hill. By the 1670’s the settlers began to divide the vacant land in the north of the town between themselves. A series of long lots were created, one to a family, running from today’s Fairfield Woods Road, Brookside Drive and Hulls Farm Road north to the Danbury bounds. Redding, Weston, and Easton were all once included within the boundaries of Fairfield. Today, if you drive up one of the old "upright highways"-Sturgis Highway, Burr Street, or Morehouse Highway - you are traveling on the access roads to the lands once owned by those families.