Daniel M. Tyler House (1840)

At 49 Camp Bethel Road in Haddam is a Greek Revival house erected by Daniel Melvin Tyler (1804-1868) shortly after he acquired the land, south of Rutty Creek, in 1839 from Heman Tyler. It was part of the old house lot of Daniel M. Tyler’s great-grandfather, Nathaniel Tyler (1699-1744). Daniel Tyler married Dolly Shailer, sister of Florilla Shailer, who lived with her husband Jared Shailer on Bridge Road. Daniel and Dolly’s youngest sons, Albert and George, both attended Wesleyan University and Yale Law School.

In 1908, the family sold the house to Emil Schutte, whose main residence was on Middlesex Turnpike. One of Haddam’s most notorious residents, Schutte ran a gas station and grocery store on Middlesex Turnpike and served as town constable and tax collector. He also engaged in shady real estate deals and terrorized his wife and seven sons. In 1921, he was put on trial for murdering four people in Haddam. After he was declared guilty, Schutte attempted suicide at the Haddam jail, but he was eventually hanged at the state prison in Wethersfield on October 22, 1922.

David C. Hubbard House (1825)

The house at 373 Saybrook Road in Haddam was built about 1825 by David C. Hubbard, who was a ship builder and master carpenter employed at the Huntington and Child shipyards at Higganum Landing. After his death in 1841 the house was acquired by Luther Freeman. About 1810, Freeman had started a brickyard about a half a mile north of the Landing. He retired around the time he bought the house and the business was continued by his sons, George A. Freeman and Orrin Freeman, until circa 1850. George inherited the house from his father, but lived at the Landing. He sold the house to Harvey Child in 1870.

Orlando Gladwin House (1830)

The house 363 Saybrook Road in the Higganum section of Haddam was built in the early 1830s by Orlando Gladwin (1805-1894), shortly after his marriage to Tamzin S. Church in 1829. A trunk made by Tamzin’s father with the initials T.S.C. was recently donated to the Haddam Historical Society. Gladwin was a carpenter who may have built the house himself and later added the many eclectic architectural details it displays today. The house was erected on land owned by his father, James Gladwin. After his father died in 1855, Orlando Gladwin mortgaged the house to his brother, Erasmus, a shipbuilder.

Clark-Bailey House (1828)

The house at 381 Saybrook Road in Higganum in Haddam was built in 1828 by Silas Clark, who lost it a year later in a lawsuit. Asahel P. Bailey purchased the house in 1849. Bailey was a wood turner who later became a blacksmith and worked for the D. & H. Scoville Hoe Company. After Bailey’s death in 1901, one of his two daughters, Sabra, and her husband, Frederic Kelsey occupied the house until the early 1930s. The house remained in the extended Bailey family until 1938.

Stephen Brooks House (1805)

The house at 384 Saybrook Road in Higganum (in Haddam) was originally erected in 1805 as a three-bay residence with a side hall (the front door being in the right bay). A two-bay addition was constructed in 1981 on the west side (so now the front door is in the central of five bays). The house was built by Stephen Brooks (1777-1860), a manufacturer and carpenter. In 1848 he sold the house to Calvin Hull, whose family owned the house for several decades.

Levi Ward Tavern (1799)

The house at 389 Saybrook Road in Haddam, across from the road leading to Higganum Landing, was operated as a tavern during the area’s heyday as a river port and shipbuilding center. The house was built between 1799 and 1802, the year the Middlesex Turnpike opened. It was erected by Dr. Levi Ward (1771-1861), who soon left Connecticut, as related in Fifty Puritan Ancestors (1902), by Elizabeth Todd Nash:

Levi Ward, Jr., son of Levi and Mary Meigs Ward, born July 29, 1771, graduated at Yale College, studied medicine under Dr. Jonathan Todd, and took his M.D.; married Mehitable Hand, youngest daughter of Capt. Daniel Hand.

. . . .

In 1807 Levi Ward, Sr., John Ward and Levi Ward, M.D., went to the “Genesee Country” [in New York State] to settle. Bergen was then in the wilderness and Indians, bears, wolves, deer, were the neighbors of the little company from Haddam. Dr. Ward was the only physician in that locality, and he was sent for from distant settlements, entailing long wearisome journeys through the forests.

In 1817, from his new home in Bergen, Dr. Ward sold the tavern in Connecticut to George Smith. It was acquired by Cornelius Brainerd (1811-1884) in 1849. As described in The genealogy of the Brainerd-Brainard family in America, 1649-1908, Vol. II (1908), by Lucy Abigail Brainard:

In his earlier years he was a manufacturer of clocks. He was commissioner on roads and ferries in 1868, and commissioner to the Superior Court about 22 years. He was collector in the Second Congressional District in 1864 and the four years following. He was several years justice of the peace and selectman. He was nominated to the Whig State Convention Dec. 23, 1848. He was a committee to procure recruits in the late Civil War. He was county commissioner in 1855 and ’56. He represented the Nineteenth District in 1867 and ’68 in the Connecticut Senate, and was chairman of the committee on agriculture, on contested elections and on education. He introduced the bill for free schools and through his influence it was passed. He has been called “The father of free schools.” He held many offices in the gift of the people, both local and state wise, and was for a number of years United States deputy collector of internal revenue.

He was a power in politics in the Nineteenth District,clear headed and far seeing, doing good service for the Republican Party. His judgment was good and when followed, success in almost every case resulted. Firm and unyielding as a rock, he was nevertheless a true, tried and trustworthy friend. He never dissembled and never betrayed the trust and confidence placed in him. He was treasurer and director in the Higganum Savings Bank from its establishment, and director in “The Bank of New England,” East Haddam, from 1857 to ’74, inclusive.