Litchfield, town, Litchfield County, northwestern Connecticut, near the Bantam River; incorporated 1719. The town is primarily a residential community and summer resort. Litchfield, noted for its fine colonial homes, is the site of the Litchfield Historical Society museum, which includes the home of Tapping Reeve, an American lawyer who in 1784 founded here the Litchfield Law School, one of the first law schools in the United States. The community, settled in 1719, is named for Lichfield, England. The town was the birthplace of the American Revolution leader Ethan Allen and the clergyman and abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher and his sister, the author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Population 1,328 (2000).
