William Mulligan House (1886)

Mulligan House, Thompsonville

This week we’ll be focusing on buildings in Enfield. At 121 Pearl Street in Thompsonville (a section of Enfield) is an extravagant Queen Anne-style residence (with a stick/Eastlake porch), built in 1886. It was the home of William Mulligan, who was probably the same William Mulligan who was a dealer in coffins, caskets and funeral supplies (he retired c. 1905) and the William J. Mulligan who was State Deputy of the Knights of Columbus.

Woodworth-Leahy House (1890)

Woodworth-Leahy House (1890)

At 28 Channing Street in New London is a large house that is transitional from the Stick Style to the Queen Anne style. It also has an Eastlake-style porch and different types of siding for each floor. It was built in 1890 by the Bishop Brothers, a firm of contractors and builders. One of the partners was Henry Bishop, whose daughter Mary married Nathan A. Woodworth, who ran a paper manufacturing company. They were the house‘s first residents. The house was later (by 1901) the home of John B. Leahy, of J.B. Leahy & Company, wholesale liquor dealers at 36 Bank Street.

George W. Jackman House (1892)

At 2403 North Avenue in Bridgeport is a Queen Anne/Shingle style house built in 1892. It was the residence of George W. Jackman, General Manager of the Springfield Manufacturing Company. He was also a Bridgeport Alderman. According to Volume 1 of the History of Bridgeport and Vicinity (1917, edited by George C. Waldo, Jr.):

The Springfield Manufacturing Company, incorporated 1909, succeeded the Springfield Emery Wheel Manufacturing Company, which was established in 1880. Grinding machinery and abrasive wheels are made by this company[.]

Major Thomas Attwater Barnes House (1885)

The house at 463 Orange Street in New Haven was built in 1884-1885 for Major Thomas Attwater Barnes, who ran a grocery business. According to vol. II of A Modern History of New Haven and Eastern New Haven County (1918), Thomas Attwater Barnes‘s father, Amos Foote Barnes,

came to New Haven from Watertown, Connecticut, in 1836 and in 1842 began his independent business career as a grocer, the outgrowth of which was the wholesale grocery business conducted for many years under the name of Fintch & Barnes and one of the well and favorably known business houses of the city. He married Nancy Richards Attwater, daughter of Thomas Attwater, and a descendant of David Attwater, one of the first settlers of New Haven.

Thomas Attwater Barnes, son of Amos F., was born in New Haven in 1848 and in 1869 became a partner of his father, when the firm name was established as Amos F. Barnes & Son and so continued until the partnership was terminated by the death of the senior member in 1890. Thomas Barnes stood in the first rank of New Haven’s substantial and valued citizens, becoming closely identified with a number of the city’s large business interests and actively interested in its public affairs. He served as president of the chamber of commerce; secretary of the State Board of Trade; president of the Union & New Haven Trust Company, which he organized; vice president and a director of the First National Bank, of which his father was an organizer; a trustee of the Connecticut Savings Bank, and director in a number of other corporations in New Haven and elsewhere. He was a member of the New Haven Grays, a famous organization in the city’s history, known as Company F, Second Regiment of the National Guard of Connecticut, joining as a private and advancing to the rank of major in the regiment. He died in 1902. Major Barnes was married in 1873 to Phoebe Bryan Phipps, daughter of Frank Goffe Phipps, of New Haven. Mrs. Barnes passed away in 1903, the mother of two children, Amos Foote and Frank Goffe Phipps, the elder also a resident of New Haven.

Biographical descriptions of T. Attwater Barnes can also be found in Taylor’s Souvenir of the Capitol (1897-1898) and in Vol. I of the Commemorative Biographical Record of New Haven County, Connecticut (1902).