In 1796, John Pelton, Jr. erected a one and a half-story gambrel-roofed house at what is now 64 Indian Hill Avenue in Portland. At a later date the house was raised to a full two stories, with the second story having a hewn overhang above the first story.
In 1850 a small square building was erected to serve as a temporary lock-up near where the railway Depot is located today in village of Noank in Groton. In 1913 the building was sold and moved to its current lot at 87 Main Street in Noank. It was then used for various purposes over the years, including a barbershop, a speakeasy, and an insurance office, before becoming a private residence. Additions over time have included a rear kitchen, side garage, and a back porch.
Allen Avery (1838-1915) was a businessman in Mystic who was very active in the local community. He worked as a ship joiner before entering the undertaking business, later opening a furniture store and then engaging in the real estate. He is associated with several houses in Mystic, including his 1874 house on Pearl Street on the Groton side and a later house on East Main Street on the Stonington side. In about 1879 he also erected the building (pictured above) at 6 Pearl Street. It’s described in the National Register of Historic Places Nomination form for the Mystic River Historic District as a “1 1/2-story cottage with roof of four gables, one in each direction,” as well as “Italianate solid brackets at the eaves returns of the front gable.” Also, “Window caps have small brackets.”
As related in the booklet The Mystic River Historical Society: Our First 40 Years (researched and written by Patricia M. Schaefer) the building was purchased in 1985 by Sandor Balint, first violinist
of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. He and his wife Joyce, who was also a violinist, felt it was a good omen that the house had been owned in 1912 by a man named Welcome Fidler. According to Kelly Sullivan, Fidler was a carriage-maker from Woodville, Rhode Island, where he was the subject of frequent raids by the local authorities for running illegal saloons. He then relocated to the building on Pearl Street in Mystic, where he operated a lunch room and pool hall on the ground floor and lived upstairs. He had not left his old ways behind however, because in 1909 and again six years later, he was raided by the police, who seized quantities of whiskey.
Built in 1878, the house at 30 School Street in the Hazardville section of Enfield has many features of the Italianate style of architecture, including a square shape with bracketed cornice, a rooftop cupola/belvedere, and a one-story columned entrance portico and side porch.
The house at 598 Main Street in Portland was built circa 1840. It was originally the home of ship carpenter Luther Savage, who married Mary Jane Buck in 1850. In 1927, the house was still occupied by Savage’s descendants, who estimated the house had been built 81 years earlier (1846).
The house at 529 Cherry Brook Road in Canton was erected circa 1848 by Neri Case (1803-1890). In the 1869 Atlas of Hartford and Tolland Counties the house is labeled as the property of L. Case. This was Lucius Case (1819-1894), Neri’s son-in-law. From 1937 until 1958, the house served as the North Canton post office. At the time it was the residence of Mrs. Ruth Vining Gracy, who was the postmaster. She continued in that role after the current North Canton Post Office building at 531 Cherry Brook Road was opened in 1958, retiring in 1967. The post office had previously been located in the Adams House at 4 West Simsbury Road, the previous postmaster being Gracy’s aunt, Mary Vining Adams. Gracy was active in the Cherry Brook Grange and the North Canton Methodist Church. She wrote a poem about the wedding of Dorothy Bahre and Richard Wright on Christmas Eve, 1939 when the church caught fire! She also wrote historical articles in the magazine The Lure of the Litchfield Hills about the church and the North Canton schools. Her son Forrest Gracy served as a U.S. Marine in the South Pacific during World War II.
According to the Sesquicentennial History of the Town of Canton, published in 1956, the house at 516 Cherry Brook Road was known as Fool’s Paradise. It was built in about 1745 by John Moses. The Sesquicentennial History claims that the North Canton Burying Ground was located on his premises and that his two-year-old daughter Eunice was the first to be buried there in 1754. Other sources note that the cemetery was a gift of Peter Curtiss of West Simsbury (which then included Canton) in 1744 and that the first burial there was in 1756. The house has a modern addition erected in 1983.