Built between 1851 and 1858, the house at 4 Main Street in Bethel was built for C. H. Shepard (1818-1899), a hatter. It is one of a number of Greek Revival-style houses in town that were likely the work of the same architect/builder.
The house at 16 Main Street in Bethel is thought to have been built circa 1790 by Daniel Barnum, a joiner and cabinetmaker who was the cousin of P. T. Barnum‘s father, Philo. In 1825, Daniel Barnum sold the house to his daughter, Anna, and her husband, John Benedict III. The couple sold the house in 1844 to Dr. Hanford N. Bennett (1818-1868), who sold it in 1853 to another physician, Dr. Ransom Perry Lyon (1826-1863). During the Civil War, Dr. Lyon was a surgeon in the 28th Regiment Connecticut Volunteer Infantry. He died during the siege of Port Hudson, Louisiana. His widow, Sophia, sold the house in 1871 to the Danbury and Norwalk Railroad. The house lost its original large center chimney when the entire building was moved 150 feet west in 1872 to make way for a new rail line along Main Street that connected the Danbury and Norwalk to the Shepaug Railroad. The building was then used as a boardinghouse for railroad workers until 1881, when George M. Cole purchased the house. He built the addition on the east side of the house, as well as the front porch.
The house at 2 Chestnut Street in Bethel was built c. 1775. At some point it was acquired by Nathan Seelye (or Seeley), probably a few years after his marriage to Hannah Hawley in 1790. Born in Fairfield in 1766, Nathan Seelye was a farmer and a hatter whose business in Bethel was located at the corner of Wooster and Main Streets. Earlier, he had been a farmer in the Startfield section of Fairfield. A story about him is related in A History of the Old Town of Stratford and the City of Bridgeport, Connecticut (1886), by Samuel Orcutt:
Nathan Seeley, when a young man, was a constable in Stratfield parish and had a writ to serve for a debt; and the law was at that time, such that the person on whom a writ was served must be touched with the paper to make the arrest legal. He rode a large, powerful horse, and found his man loading his cart with manure with a pitchfork. He told the constable to keep away and kept the fork raised for his defence. Upon this said Nathan put spurs to his horse and made him jump on the man so that he touched him with the writ. After having done that he had the power to call out the militia to make the arrest complete.
The house in Bethel continued to be occupied by his son, Isaac H. Seelye, who also had a hatting business. Isaac’s brother Seth was a merchant whose house is now the Bethel Public Library. Two of his sons became college presidents: Laurenus C. Seelye was president of Smith College from 1873 to 1910 and Julius Hawley Seelye was president of Amherst College from 1876 to 1890.
The house at 245 Greenwood Avenue in Bethel is believed to have been built in 1760 by Ebenezer Hickok (1692-1774). It was used as a tavern during the Revolutionary War by his son, Capt. Benjamin Hickcok (1750-1816), a veteran of the war who also owned a store and a gristmill. Benjamin’s son, Eli Hickok (1770-1827), later had his hatter’s shop at the address. By 1899, the owner of the house was George B. Fairchild (1857-1931), a partner in the hat manufacturing firm of Farnam & Fairchild.
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The Greek Revival house at 10 Main Street in Bethel was probably built by Frederick Shepard (1815-1894), who came from a family of hatters and was also a lawyer. He used the house as his office. The 1879 Bird’s Eye View of Bethel shows a now-lost gable-roofed structure in front of the house. Around that time, Shepard served as town clerk and was an enumerator for the 1880 census.
The house at 66 Greenwood Avenue in Bethel is transitional between the architectural styles of the Greek Revival (note the columns on the front porch) and the Italianate (note the rooftop cupola with curved windows). The house was erected c. 1845 (before 1851) by Horace Hickok, a hat manufacturer and descendant of Capt. Ebenezer Hickok, who had given land for the Bethel Congregational Church‘s meetinghouse and burial ground in the eighteenth century.
Now used as an attorney’s office, the house at 152 Greenwood Avenue in Bethel was built c. 1845. From at least 1851 until 1867, it was the home of Andrew L. Benedict (born 1822), a New York merchant who also lived in Bethel, where he was a deacon of the Congregational Church and served as Justice of the Peace, Postmaster and on the Board of Education. He married Ruth Newell Allen in 1847. Their daughter, Ursula E. Benedict, was a member of the D.A.R. The house remained in the Benedict family until 1912, afterwards serving as the Bethel Public Library until 1924. It was later owned by William Hanna and then his wife, Elaine Hanna. Their son, Richard Hanna, was a Danbury attorney.