In the view of Bethlem (Bethlehem) by John Warner Barber in his Connecticut Historical Collections (1836), the homes of the town’s first two Congregational ministers can be seen in the distance, behind a fence to left of the Congregational church. To the right is what is now called the Bellamy-Ferriday House, home to Rev. Joseph Bellamy. To the left of Rev. Bellamy’s house is that of his successor, Rev. Azel Backus, who served as minister from 1791 until 1812, when he became the first president of Hamilton College in New York. His former home in Bethlehem, built around 1750, was later moved from where it stood in Barber’s image to the nearby corner of East Street and Main Street South, just off Bethlehem Green. In the early twentieth century, it was home to Dr. William Doolittle and was called Doolicor (Doolittle’s Corner) Place (named as such in a pdf file of a 1934 listing of members of the American Public Health Association).
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