Chester is located on land known as Pattaconk or Pattyquounck in Indian deeds of the 1660's. Settled largely by families from Saybrook, it became the Fourth Ecclesiastical Society of the Saybrook Congregational Church in 1740 and was incorporated as the Town of Chester in 1836. Power from the two streams which flow through the town brought industry at an early date. The seventeenth century saw the first grist and saw mills at Cedar Lake. After the Revolution ship building flourished, and throughout the nineteenth century factories manufacturing tools and household wares prospered. The Chester ferry began operation in 1769.