Hempstead Historic District
New London
Sheila Yee Littlejohn
Located in the center of New London and surrounding the seventeenth-century Joshua Hempstead House, the Hempstead Historic District includes houses that were purchased by free African Americans in the 1840s. These properties were sold by Hempstead descendants, who were abolitionists, to Savillion Haley, who believed that African Americans deserved adequate housing as well as whites. African Americans of colonial New London had already lived in this area, and with these new purchases and later home building by African Americans, organizations important to the community's interests developed. One of these is Shiloh Baptist Church, which is now located on Garvin Street, named for early twentieth-century African American leader Albert Garvin. The District is on the National Register of Historic Places.