What Do Amelia Earhart, An Ancient Parade and Lobsters Have In Common?

NOANK, CT — Noank, the small tucked-in Groton fishing village, has a rich and storied history.

Home of the much-enjoyed for decades, Ford’s Lobster shack, its roots are firmly planted in the sea. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, it’s described as a “village on a small peninsula, vaguely ear-shaped, at the western edge of the entrance to Mystic River Harbor. With water on three sides and the double-tracked railroad corridor cutting it off on the northwest, Noank has an isolated feeling, much like an island.”

Its name is derived from the Mohegan-Pequot Algonquian-language word nauyang, which roughly translates to a point of land. A village of boat-builders, seafarers, and lobster fishers, its original shipyard dates back to the late 1800s, and was long known as the country’s largest builder of wooden ships, according to the Noank Historical Society.

Who knew? The whole of Noank, likely

A little-known historical fact about the village that has nothing to do with the sea, but instead the air, is that in 1931, Amelia Earhart married George P. Putnam in Noank. Her letter to Putnam, a sort of premarital agreement, can be seen here. The “secret wedding was held at the home of Putnam’s mother, which remains a private residence,” according to the Historical Society.

A Noank tradition: The oldest? The first?

Besides its ancient ties to the sea, the village has another singular tradition. There’s debate about which U.S. city or town can boast of having the oldest, or the first. Many claim to be the oldest, continuous Memorial Day parade in the nation, including Bay Ridge, Brooklyn and Ironton, Ohio. We’ll go with Noank as its parade dates back 147 years this May, when the Noank Memorial Day Parade will kick off.

But love of Noank aside, is it the longest running Memorial Day Parade in the nation? In a CPTV piece from 2018, it's noted that Dr. Karen Meister Willis of Nonak looked into the claim. The first Noank Decoration Day parade, as the Memorial Day parade was first known, was May 30, 1876, as reported by the Mystic River Press, one of the Westerly Sun newspapers, founded in 1857, Willis found.

Decoration Day was founded by an organization of Union veterans called the Grand Army of the Republic three years after the Civil War ended in May 1868. Nine men from Noank died in the Civil War, including Fenimore C. Weeks, who died at the Battle of Antietam in 1862. The first Noank parade in 1876 saw school children deliver flowers to their graves.