Jordan Schoolhouse (1740)

jordan-schoolhouse.jpg

One of the historic structures on Jordan Green in Waterford is the 1740 Jordan Schoolhouse, the oldest surviving public building in Waterford. The earliest mention of a schoolhouse in Jordan actually dates to 1737. The present schoolhouse building was converted into a private home in the mid-nineteenth century for the widow Eliza Gallup and her three children. The building’s granite front steps came originally from the nineteenth-century West Neck Schoolhouse. The Jordan Schoolhouse was moved to Jordan Green in 1972 and is now a museum run by the Waterford Historical Society.

The Martin Wells House (1800)

646-wolcott-hill.jpg

Not much is known about the construction of the house at 646 Wolcott Hill Road in Wethersfield. Most likely built by 1800, it may date to much earlier. The house is associated with the name Martin Wells, perhaps an ancestor or relative of Judge Martin Wells, who lived in the Webb House starting around 1820 and hosted Tocqueville when he visited the Connecticut State Prison in Wethersfield in 1831. The Wells House on Wolcott Hill Road at one time had a front porch attached, which was later removed.

Whale Oil Row (1835)

whale-oil-row.jpg

Whale Oil Row is a row of four similar Greek Revival houses on Huntington Street in New London. They each have a portico with Ionic columns supporting a triangular Greek pediment with a semicircular window. The houses were built between 1835 and 1845 on speculation by Ezra Chappel. The original owners included two whaling ship owners, a merchant and a physician. Because the wealth of three of these owners derived from the whaling industry, the houses became known as “Whale Oil Row.”

See below for images of each of the four houses. (more…)

The John C. Anderson House (1882)

john-c-andreson-house.jpg

Although by 1882 the Second Empire was no longer in fashion, the wealthy New Yorker John C. Anderson built an extravagant home in the style that year on Orange Street in New Haven. He only occupied the impressive mansion for a few years, complaining as he left of high taxes. Anderson was the son of the prominent New York tobacconist, John Anderson, who had died the year before his son built his own retirement home in New Haven. The elder John Anderson had an interesting career. In 1841, he was questioned in a sensational murder case, after Mary Rogers, known as the “Beautiful Cigar Girl,” who worked for Anderson in his tobacco shop, was found dead. The murder inspired the Edgar Allen Poe story, “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt.” In later life, Anderson would talk to spirits, including the ghosts of Mary Rogers and of his dead son. He had supported Garibaldi, who liberated Italy, and would speak to the Italian hero’s ghost (although Garibaldi was alive at the time!). Later, the John C. Anderson House became St. Mary’s Academy High School, run by the Dominican Sisters of St. Mary.

Hicks-Stearns Family Museum (1788)

hicks-stearns-family-museum.jpg

This Thanksgiving we focus on a house that is now a family museum. The Hicks-Stearns Family Museum, established in 1980, is a Victorian era home, located on Tolland Green. The earliest parts of the house date to the eighteenth century, sometime before 1788, when then owner Benoni Shepard established a tavern in the home known as Shepard’s Tavern at the Sign of the Yellow Ball. Shepard was also a deacon of the Congregational Church and served as postmaster, with a post office in his home, from 1795 to 1807. The house was occupied by the Hicks family from 1845 into the the 1970s. The family enlarged and embellished the house with many Victorian-era architectural features in the 1870s and 1880s. Charles R. Hicks was a leading merchant in Providence and New York, who retired to Tolland. He married Maria Amelia Stearns Their son, Ratcliffe Hicks, was president of the Canfield Rubber Works of Bridgeport and a member of the state legislature. The Ratcliffe Hicks School of Agriculture at UCONN is also named for him.