Brooklyn, formerly Mortlake, was first settled in 1703 and became a town on the 2nd Thursday of May, 1786. It was the home of General Israel Putnam before and after the Revolution. Its landmarks include the Meeting House on the Green, built in 1771 by the First Ecclesiastical Society of Brooklyn and becoming Connecticut’s first Unitarian Church in 1816, with Samuel J. May as minister; Old Trinity Church on Church Street, erected in 1771 by Godfrey Malbone; and the former Windham County Courthouse, built in 1820 and afterward used as Town Hall, where Prudence Crandall of Canterbury was tried in 1833 for defying a law restricting Negro education. The Brooklyn Fair, held annually since 1852, is the nation’s oldest continuous agricultural fair.