The house at 372 Saybrook Road in Higganum in Haddam was built in 1815 by Ezra Kelsey (1789-1881), a blacksmith whose shop was at Higganum Landing, where he supplied the shipbuilding industry. The house’s rear ell, which was moved from the edge of the Connecticut River, may date eighteenth century. The house remained in the Kelsey family until 1964. Ezra’s grandson, Horatio Nelson Kelsey, began using the house as a summer home in 1917 and his daughter, Burnette Kelsey (1898-1988), ran Miss Kelsey’s kindergarten in the house from the 1940s to the early 1960s. She sold the house to Richard and Marjorie DeBold, who have maintained such features as the circa-1820 Chinese-themed dining room wallpaper and the beam by the front door, where members of the Kelsey family marked their heights for several generations.
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