Colonial - Historic Buildings of Connecticut

William Shelley House (1730)

The Shelley House, at 248 Boston Post Road in Madison, dates to the late seventeenth/early eighteenth Century, with specific dates variously given that include 1709/1710 and 1730. This exceptionally well-preserved structure is a rare surviving example of a house that was clearly built in several stages, following a pattern believed to have been common at the time: starting with a one-room, two-story dwelling with a stone wall at one end (the east half), a second section added later (the west half) and finally a lean-to at the rear. Traditionally known as the William Shelley House and also known as the Stone-Shelley House, it underwent a controversial restoration c. 2008.

Parish-Gillett House (1734)

Although built circa 1734, the house at 700-712 Main Street in Branford has been much altered with Queen Anne-style elements. It was built by Ephraim Parish, Jr. and was known as the Old Parish Tavern. In 1811 the building was renovated by Rev. Timothy Gillett, who resided there until his death in 1866. Rev. Gillett was pastor of the First Church of Branford for 59 years and founded Branford Academy in 1820. Today the building contains offices and one residential unit.

Washband Tavern (1714)

In 1714, John Twitchell (c. 1699-1739) built a small one-story with attic dwelling at what is now 90 Oxford Road in Oxford. Around 1741 the Washband (or Washburn) family purchased the property and enlarged the house to serve as a tavern. In 1784, coinciding with the opening of the Oxford Turnpike, the family enlarged the building again, adding what amounted to a new house attached to the old one. The Washband family operated the tavern for several generations. Before the Civil War, the tavern was a stop on the Underground Railroad. Hiding places are said to exist in the cellar. The former tavern is now home to Daoud & Associates.

Dr. James Percival House (1784)

Dr. James Percival (d. 1807) was a prominent physician in the parish of Kensington in the town of Berlin. He was the father of the poet and naturalist James Gates Percival (1795-1856). The doctor is described by Julius H. Ward in The Life and Letters of James Gates Percival (1866):

He had a strong constitution and a vigorous mind. He easily grasped a subject, and was noted for keeping his own counsel and doing things entirely in his own way. He was social and persuasive in society, but divided his time mostly between his profession and his home. He was not liberally educated, but he had a taste for letters, and was as well read as most Connecticut doctors in his day. Except in winter, when he could use a sleigh, he made his calls on horseback, turning his saddle-bags into a medicine-chest. He was prompt in business and eminent in his profession. It was said of him by a friend: “Few physicians in a country town ever performed more business in a given time than Dr. Percival. This may be asserted of him both as it respects his whole professional life and also his daily visits. With a practice of nineteen years, he left an estate that was inventoried at fourteen thousand dollars.”

The same book describes the doctor’s house (381 Percival Avenue), built in 1784, in which James Gates Percival was born in 1795, and the surrounding neighborhood:

The house of his birth is still standing. It is a plain wooden building, bordering close upon the street, with a long sloping roof in the rear,-—a style of dwelling which our ancestors brought from England. It has now quite other tenants, and its shattered windows and uneven roof and weather-beaten paint show the marks of age. It is situated in one of the most romantic and charming regions in Connecticut. Near at hand is the parish church, standing on an elevated site, in the shade of fine old trees of buttonwood and oak, its low steeple cropping out just above their tops; in front of the house and over the way is an orchard slope; around it are patches of mowing and pasture; and at its foot is a beautiful sheet of water, which turns several mills in its progress, and then dashes over the rocks, and winds away among green meadows. Farm-houses are scattered everywhere among the neighboring eminences and in the valley. The whole neighborhood is remarkable for the rich and varied beauty of its scenery

Rev. Samuel Lockwood House (1749)

The house at 349 Jonathan Trumbull Highway (Route 6) in Andover was built in 1749 to be the residence (Parsonage) of Rev. Samuel Lockwood (1721-1791), the first minister of Andover’s First Congregational Church. The house originally stood just to the east of its current location. It was moved in 1927 to make way for the construction of the Andover Public Library. At that time the house was most likely turned as well, so that its gable-end now faces the road.

Rev. Samuel Lockwood is described in Vol. I of William B. Sprague’s Annals of the American Pulpit, reprinted in Descendants of Robert Lockwood: Colonial and Revolutionary History of the Lockwood Family in America, from A.D. 1630 (1889):

Samuel Lockwood was descended from a highly respectable family, and was born at Norwalk, Conn., November 30th, 1721. He was the son of James and Lydia (Smith) Lockwood. He was graduated at Yale College in 1745. He pursued his theological studies under the direction of his brother, the Rev. James Lockwood, who had at that time been settled for several years as pastor of the church in Wethersfield.

An ecclesiastical society in Andover, Conn., having been formed in 1747 from the three towns of Coventry, Lebanon and Hebron, Mr. Lockwood, shortly after he was licensed to preach, was employed by that society as a candidate for settlement. He commenced his labors there about the beginning of 1748, when the parish voted “to hire him to preach as a probationer,” they passed this additional, and, as it would seem at this day, superfluous vote, that ” Mr. Lockwood may change with any orthodox minister to preach to us when he shall see cause.” Having after the manner of those days undergone a long probation among them as a candidate, he was ordained as pastor February 25th, 1749, O. S., the church having been constituted on the preceding day. The ordination sermon was preached by his brother the minister of Wethersfield. He continued in the faithful discharge of the duties of his office upwards of forty years.

[. . .] In 1774 he was appointed to preach the annual sermon before the Legislature of the State, and though there is nothing in it to indicate remarkable powers of mind, it is, nevertheless, a judicious, patriotic and well-adapted discourse. It is the only acknowledged production of his that was ever printed.

In 1791 an enfeebled state of health obliged him to desist from his labors, and by medical advice he visited the mineral springs at New Lebanon in the hope that the waters might prove beneficial to him. But in this both himself and his friends were disappointed; for after he had been there a short time his disease assumed an aggravated form, and very soon the afflicting tidings came back to his people that he was no longer among the living. He died on Saturday the 18th of June, in the 70th year of his age, and the 43d of his ministry.

Henrietta House (1722)

The Byles Homestead is an early eighteenth-century house at 125 Ashford Center Road in Ashford. It stands on part of what had been the 226 acre farm bought by Josias (or Josiah) Byles in 1726 (or 1718). Josias Byles (c.1682-1752) was a Boston shopkeeper who is buried in that city’s Granary Burying Ground. His half-brother, Rev. Mather Byles (1706-1788) was a famously witty clergyman, author and poet who was a loyalist during the Revolutionary War. Josias’ son, Ebenezer Byles (1723-1805), settled on his father’s property in Ashford in 1743. The Byles Homestead passed to Ebenezer’s son Josias, then to his grandson Elisha and then to his great-grandson Andrew H. Byles. As related in Genealogical and Biographical Record of New London County, Connecticut (1905):

Deacon Andrew Huntington Byles was born Oct. 3, 1820, on the old home farm in Ashford, which is located on the turnpike between Ashford Centre and Warrenville. He was brought up to a very practical knowledge of farm work, which, however, in his younger days did not appeal to him, as he had a great desire to enter the medical profession. This boon was denied him as his assistance was needed by his father at home. His education was acquired in the common schools, and for several years he taught school in Ashford and surrounding towns. The old farm continued to be his home, and he assisted very materially in its management until after the death of his father, when it became his by inheritance. He resided there until 1888, when he removed to Willimantic and made that city his home until his death May 17, 1894.

Today, 69 acres of the Byles family’s old property is the Josias Byles Sanctuary, given to Joshua’s Trust in 1988. The Byles House is now a bed and breakfast called Henrietta House. The sign for Henrietta House gives a date of circa 1722, around which time the oldest sections of the residence were built.

Jabez Benton House (1730)

The house at 101 State Street in Guilford was built in 1730 for Jabez Benton (1680-1756) and his wife Hannah Stone (1702-1773). They were married in 1726 and had seven children. In 1853 George Walter Hinckley, who would become a teacher and a minister, was born in the house. In 1889 he founded a farm school for homeless children in Fairfield, Maine called Good Will Farm. By the time Hinckley died in 1950, the school had a campus of 3,000 acres with 45 buildings and served more than 3,000 underprivileged and troubled youth.