The house of Capt. Samuel Mather, on Lyme Street in Old Lyme, is an impressive gambrel-roofed structure built around 1784 or 1790. The width of the house’s clapboard siding is graduated, increasing with each course up to the building’s cornice. Capt. Mather, a descendant of Rev. Richard Mather of Dorchester, was a wealthy merchant involved in trade with the West Indies. He married Lois Griswold and their daughter, Mehitable Mather, married Capt. Thomas Sill. The house is now the Parsonage of the First Congregational Church of Old Lyme.
Capt. Samuel Mather House (1790)
I stumbled upon this picture , today 9.10.2012, while looking up Yale University and amazed to discover that an ancestor of mine had helped found it, and then discovered his descendant of the same name. I now recall that my father, Jossleyn Hennessy, long ago took the trouble to research him and other interesting Mathers and write a piece on him. They are somewhere buried in my cellar, which I intend to give to the Thomaston Historical Foundation. Connecticut. One day when I ease up on my own historical researches related to my job in London, I will hunt out the manuscript and have a read.