Bridgeport, Connecticut Lottery Bridge across the Pequonnock, connecting the wharves on its east and west banks. Bridgeport Bank was established in 1806. In 1821, the township of Bridgeport became independent of Stratford. The West India trade died down around 1840, but by that time the Bridgeport Steamship Company (1824) and Bridgeport Whaling Company (1833) had been incorporated and the Housatonic Railroad chartered (1836). The HRRC ran upstate along the Housatonic Valley, connecting with Massachusetts's Berkshire Railroad at the state line. Bridgeport was chartered as Connecticut's fifth city in 1836 in order to enable the town council to secure funding (ultimately $150,000) to
History of Bridgeport, Connecticut of deindustrialization and declining population, though it overtook Hartford as the state's most populous city by 1980. Much of the land that became Bridgeport was originally occupied by the Pequonnock Indians of the Paugussett nation. One village consisted of about five or six hundred inhabitants in approximately 150 lodgings. Other than Black Rock and Parts of Brooklawn which were originally part of the township of Fairfield, Bridgeport was originally a part of the township of Stratford. The first English settlement on the west bank of the mouth of the Pequonnock River was made in about 1665 and was called Pequonnock.