Nelson Peck House (1851)

The house at 104 Peck Road in Bethany was erected sometime before 1851, at which time it was the property of Noyes Hotchkiss (1814-1866). It was acquired in 1867 by Justus Peck (1807-1885) for his son, Harry French Peck (died 1916), a blacksmith who made ox yokes and wagons (the house was conveyed by Justus to Harry in 1870). Harry’s son Nelson Justus Peck (died 1958) was born in the house in 1874 and the residence is named after him in the 1972 book Bethany’s Old Houses and Community Buildings, by Alice Bice Bunton.

Israel Perkins House (1835)

Edward Perkins (1743-1787) built a house at what is now 6 Grant Road in Bethany, which was sold by his son, Israel Perkins (1767-1846) in 1835 to Dr. Chauncey B. Foote of Hamden. Israel Perkins is described in The New England Historical and Genealogical Register, Volume 17 (1863):

Israel Perkins designed to pursue professional life and had expected to commence a course of study the year that his father died. Being left by this event at the head of the family, he was compelled to forego this purpose and remain at home on the farm. He lived in the house which his father built, on the turnpike from Litchfield, near the school-house. From 1793 to 1795, he lived at Hamden Plain. When he was 28 he became quite deaf, and continued so through life. He was well known in that part of the country, as selectman of the town, settler of estates, guardian of children, &c., &c.; and was so skilled in the law that he was familiarly called “the old lawyer.”

Dr. Foote removed the original Perkins House and built a new one just in front of where it had stood. The book Bethany’s Old Houses and Community Buildings (1972), by Alice Bice Bunton, however, refers to the current structure under the heading of “The Israel Perkins House.” In 1838, Dr. Foote sold the house to Major Lounsbury (died 1863) and it remained in the Lounsbury family until 1912.

Old Town Hall, Bethany (1914)

The building at 512 Amity Road in Bethany was erected in 1914 (with a small addition built in 1952) to serve as the Town Hall. In 1977, part of an elementary school on Peck Road was renovated for use as a new Town Hall. The old building on Amity Road was renamed the Stanley Downs Memorial Building to commemorate former First Selectman Stanley H. Downs (1906-1963). The Bethany Episcopal Church purchased the building from the town in 1980. In 1994, the church gave it to the new Bethany Historical Society, which had just been formed the year before. The Historical Society restored the building in 1995-1996 to become a museum.

Clark Memorial Library (1936)

A private library, called the Bethany Union Library, used to meet between 1798 and 1812 at the home of Capt. Isaac Judd. In 1930, residents of Bethany seeking to start a public library for the town, met at the home of Treat B. Johnson (1875-1947), a Yale chemistry professor and a descendant of two of the founding members of the original library. In 1936 a town library was finally erected at 538 Amity Road through the gift of Noyes Clark in memory of his parents.

Captain David Beecher and Hannah Perkins Beecher House (1762)

The house at 545 Amity Road in Bethany was built in 1760 or 1762. It faces south, parallel to the road, and is built into a hillside. It was originally owned by Captain David Beecher and Hannah Perkins Beecher. The earliest known conveyance of the property was in 1851 from Lysias Beecher to David Beecher and William M. Hull. It passed through other owners until Hubert W. Delano acquired it in 1946. It was conveyed in 1955 to Edna L. Delano (1890-1982), who had been an army nurse in World War One. In 1986, her sons, Hubert and William Delano, gave a parcel of land south of the house, called the Delano Sanctuary, to the Bethany Land Trust in honor of their mother, Edna L. Delano.

This post has been updated on March 26, 2021 with new information from the current owner (since 1986) of the house. The name of the post has also been changed from the “Lysias Beecher House” to the “Captain David Beecher and Hannah Perkins Beecher House” to reflect how it is listed in the State Register of Historic Places.

Harry French House (1823)

Clover Nook Farm is an eighth generation family-owned farm at 50 Fairwood Road in Bethany. The farm started in 1765 when David French married Hannah Lines and the couple settled on the French family’s Bethany land. Their son, Harry French, built a farmhouse in 1823 that still stands at the center of the farm. The later generations to run the farm were Harry‘s daughter, Jane, and her husband, Justus Peck; their daughter Charlotte and her husband, Samuel Woodward; their son Sherman, followed by his son, Sherman, Jr.; and now Sherman, Jr.’s daughter Deborah and her husband and son, Eric and Lars Demander.