Frederick H. Cossitt Library (1891)

Frederick Henry Cossitt was born in Granby in 1811, but later settled for a time in Memphis, Tennessee, where he ran a wholesale dry goods business. In 1859, he moved to New York, where he was involved in real estate, insurance, and banking. Before he died in 1887, Cossitt had expressed a desire to build libraries in both Granby and Memphis and his heirs carried out his wishes. The Cossitt Library in Memphis was built in 1893. The other Cossitt Library, at 388 North Granby Road in Granby, was built in 1891, across the street from the house where Cossitt had been born eighty years before. The library has recently been renovated to reinforce the main floor and reconstruct the ground floor entrance. Cossitt’s daughter Helen married Augustus D. Juilliard and on their deaths, the couple left $12 million to found what would become the Julliard School.

American Legion Hall, Granby (1847)

This Fourth of July we’re looking at the American Legion Hall in North Granby. In 1845, in his History of Simsbury, Granby, and Canton, Noah A. Phelps wrote that “There is a society of Universalists in North Granby. The members meet every other Sunday for worship, and have taken measures to erect a house for their religions meetings.” By 1848, as explained in The Universalist Miscellany, Volume 5, No. 8, “The Universalist Church recently erected in Granby, Ct., was dedicated on the 1st of December [1847]. Sermon by Bro. H. B. Soule, of Hartford. The church is a very neat building, and will seat three hundred persons.” The Universalist congregation disbanded in 1911 and the former church served as a school until 1949. It then became an American Legion Hall.

Weed-Enders House (1790)

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One of the four historic properties owned by the Salmon Brook Historical Society is the Weed-Enders House. The house was originally constructed in 1790, six miles to the west of its present location, by Moses Weed. It was then owned by members of the Weed family and then other families, until it was acquired in 1924 by John Enders, who used it as a hunting lodge. In 1974, after the Enders State Forest was established, the house was moved to be adjacent to the Abijah Rowe House. It is now part of the Samon Brook Historical Society’s museum.

Abijah Rowe House (1732)

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The town of Granby began as a settlement called Salmon Brook, which eventually separated from Simsbury. The Abijah Rowe House, built around 1732, is the oldest surviving building from the original settlement. It was built by Nehemiah Lee, who sold it to his son-in-law, Peter Rowe, in 1750. Three years later it was acquired by Peter’s brother, Abijah Rowe. Both brothers were blacksmiths and may have produced some of the house’s hardware. Rowe died in 1812 and the following year his heirs sold the house to Elijah and Joseph Smith. In 1903, it was sold by the Smith family to Fred M. Colton, a tobacco grower, whose daughters, Mildred Colton Allison and Carolyn Colton Avery, gave the house to the Salmon Brook Historical Society in 1966. It is now part of a campus of four historic structures open to the public.