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The Thimble Group shown in a Seamap
Named by the Stony Creek Indians for the low thimble berry, second cousin to the gooseberry, the Thimble Islands (41N15, 72W15) consists of 365 islands, 32 of them habitable, the second largest being Horse Island, 17 acres, and the smallest, Dogfish Island, three-quarter of an acre. The islands are glacial deposits of pink granite, which was quarried at the turn of the century to make sturdy foundations for the Statue of Liberty and the Brooklyn Bridge. Even the Indians discovered that the rocks made excellent arrowheads.
Captain Kidd (one of the best known pirates on the North American Coast) had his observation headquarters between 1695 and 1700 on High Island, providing him with a semilandlocked cove, where he hid from American sloops of war.
Across the narrow channel on Pot Island, he found a cavern, reachable only from under the water. It is rumored that William Kidd left a substantial amount of gold in the cavern, but to this day no one has been able to find the underwater entrance (William Kid was hang on in London in 1701). Pot Island gained fame in the 1880s when a fat men's club used the island's glacially formed potholes for a drinking rite. The club filled one pothole 30 feet deep with their punch and didn't leave the island unitl the hole had been drained.
On Outer Island, the most southern offshore islands, stands the remainds of a 1799 built light. A new light stands on Fish Rock, about 200 m further south, built in 1904.
The first permanent population became the insland in the turn to the 19th century, when some holiday resort houses wer built on the islands. Today several islands are in private hand.
I found an old chronic, in which it stands that the first stony house was built in 1639 on on Hourse Island. Between 1637 and 1640 a bloody battle of the Pequot War was fought here. Tradition says that the head of an Indian, slain in combat, was placed by Uncas in the fork of a tree, were the skull remained for many years, giving the point of its present name, Indian Head, the northern most point of that island.
Compare for more details: Houghton Mifflin, in Connecticut - American Guide Service, or W.Schippke, "The History of the Thimble Islands", in German, in Geo.Rev., 1990