At 44 Main Street in the Borough of Stonington is a house, built in 1761 by the merchant Gilbert Fanning. Fanning was soon forced, due to his economic circumstances, to deed the house to his father-in-law, Dr. Nathan Palmer. Gilbert’s son, Edmund Fanning, was born in the house in 1769 and would go on to become the first American captain to circumnavigate the globe, in 1797-1798, aboard the Betsey, with a crew from Stonington. His elder brother, Nathaniel Fanning, served with John Paul Jones in the Revolutionary War during the 1779 battle of USS Bonhomme Richard and the HMS Serapis.
Edmund Fanning Birthplace (1761)