Christopher Todd was barely twenty years of age, when he and his young bride sailed with Mr. Davenports company on the Hector, probably sometime in April 1637. Two months was perhaps, the average time consumed in sailing from London to Boston in vessels of that day. The Hector arrived in Boston on the 26th of June 1637.

He bought a grist mill, which was the first mill erected by the town of New Haven, "at the falls over the trap dyke at the east end of Mill Rock, two miles from the center of the town." This was at first, hired and then bought of the town, before the year 1686. This mill stood on or near where Whitney's Gun factory now stands and was long known as Todd's mill, and after 1798 passed into the possession of Eli Whitney, who erected there, the first establishment in America for manufacturing fire arms.