Timothy Dwight (1752-1817) was a Congregational minister, author and educator. Before becoming president of Yale University in 1795, Dwight served as minister of the Greenfield Hill Congregational Church in Fairfield from 1783 to 1795. He also started a well-respected academy in Greenfield Hill in 1783-1784. His 1794 poem, Greenfield Hill, references “Fair Verna,” the name he gave to his house and farm in Greenfield Hill. Isaac Bronson purchased Verna Farm in 1796 and it was later inherited by his son, Frederic Bronson. Dwight’s eighteenth-century house was eventually torn down in 1891 by Frederic’s son, Frederic Bronson, Jr., a wealthy New York City lawyer, who commissioned architect Richard Morris Hunt to design a grand new house on the site. Bronson also had a windmill built on his property in 1893-1894. After his death, Verna was the home of his daughter, Elizabeth Duer Bronson (1877–1914), and her husband, Lloyd Carpenter Griscom (1872-1959), an influential lawyer and diplomat: during Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency, he served successively as ambassador to Iran, Japan, Brazil and Italy. In 1933, the Bronson estate was acquired by W. A. Morschhauser, who had the house remodeled and made smaller in 1900: the third story was removed and the number of rooms was reduced from 42 to 13. Since 1949, the house, located at 2970 Bronson Road, has been occupied by the Fairfield Country Day School.
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