Woodford-Newell-Strong House (1666)

Woodford-Newell-Strong House

The building at 1 Waterville Road (AKA 820 Farmington Avenue) in Farmington contains sections of two much earlier houses. In 1807, Pomeroy Strong (1777-1861) purchased the land, which included the gambrel-roofed one-story Woodford House, built c. 1666 by Joseph Woodford Sr. Strong also acquired the Newell Homeasted, built some time earlier (perhaps as early as 1650) by Thomas Newell. Woodford and Newell were among the original 84 proprietors of the town of Farmington and in 1666 Woodford married Newell’s daughter Rebecca. By 1807 the Farmington Canal was being constructed and its path went right through where the Newell House stood. Strong moved the house to the east and, attaching it to the south of the Woodford House. He remodeled the structure, adding a second story. At Strong’s death his estate passed to his two daughters, Julia and Ellen Root Bartlett. In 1862 Ellen sold her interest to Julia and her husband, Dr. Chauncey Brown (1808-1879). He is described in Farmington, Connecticut, the Village of Beautiful Homes (1906):

Dr. Chauncey Brown was born in Canterbury, Conn. He went to Brown University for one year and then to Union College, whence he was graduated with honor. He was a student of Greek, reading the Greek Testament with great pleasure during the remainder of his life. From the medical school of Bowdoin he returned to Canterbury. In the last year and a half of the Civil War he was physician and surgeon in one of the hospitals of Washington. He came to Farmington about 1835 and in 1837 married Julia M. Strong. He was a strenuous believer in abstinence from alcoholic drink and also in anti-slavery when both beliefs were unpopular.

When the Amistad Committee arranged for the Amistad captives to stay in Farmington before returning to Africa, the girl named Temme was to be housed with the family of Horace Cowles. By the time she arrived at the Cowles residence on March 19, 1841, Horace Cowles had passed away and his widow soon moved to West Hartford. Temme then went to the house of Dr. Chauncey Brown, where she lived for most of her stay in Farmington. Dr. Brown’s wife, Julia Strong Brown, described her experiences with Tamme in The Farmington Magazine in February 1901:

It was a most singular episode in the quiet life of Farmington which brought to us the band of Mendians in which were included three Mendian girls.

One of these, by name Tamie, was sent directly to and remained with me until their departure for their native land, and she proved a most interesting personality. About fourteen years of age, she was tall, straight as an arrow, and lithe as a willow, with a soft low voice and a sweet smile which so far as I remember, never developed into a laugh. Her nature was rather serious and yet she was uniformly cheerful.

[ . . .] she was fond of flowers and particularly enjoyed a little garden which she tended carefully. I remember her joy when I had been preparing pineapples, she asked for the green crowns to plant and was so delighted when they began to grow. Her perceptions were keen and her questions innumerable.

The house later passed to the Browns’ son, Philip Brown, and then to his cousin, Eleanor Bartlett Phelps, who owned it until 1963. Since then it has been a commercial property. In 2011 the house was added to the town’s blighted building list because the property had deteriorated and had a shabby appearance. In 2014 there were plans to tear down the rear section (the 1666 Woodford House), but these later fell through. The building is currently vacant and is still a threatened building.

Fillmore House (1743)

Fillmore House

Bean Hill is a neighborhood in Norwich that was a local commercial and manufacturing center in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The area was home to the ancestors of several nineteenth-century US presidents: Millard Fillmore, Rutherford B. Hayes and Grover Cleveland. The home of President Cleveland’s grandfather, William Cleveland, a silversmith and deacon of the Congregational Church, does not survive, but there is a Fillmore family house at 8 Huntington Avenue, across from the Bean Hill Green. The house was built around 1743 (the date is inscribed on the house’s central chimney). Millard Fillmore‘s great-grandfather, Capt. John Fillmore, Jr. (1701-1777), lived in Norwich and later settled in Norwich West Farms (now Franklin). Millard Fillmore‘s grandfather, Nathaniel Fillmore, Sr. (1738-1814), and grandmother, Hepzibah Wood (1747-1783), were both born in Franklin and lived in Norwich. Another relative of the President, also a great-grandson of John Fillmore, Jr., was Rev. Jehiel Fillmore (1797-1862), who was born in Franklin and lived at Bean Hill.

Black Horse Tavern (1712)

Black Horse Tavern

Located at 175 North Cove Road on Saybrook Point in Old Saybrook is a building erected around 1712 by John Burrows. Known as the Black Horse Tavern, it served travelers as an inn for many years and was a customs house during the brief period Saybrook was a port of entry on the Connecticut River. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the area was a commercial district with a busy wharf. Ambrose Kirtland acquired the tavern in 1771 and deeded it to his son, Daniel Kirtland, in 1794. It may have been Daniel Kirtland who updated the building in the Federal style. From 1871 to 1924 the Valley Shore Railroad went right by the former tavern, which revived the tavern’s buiseness in the nineteenth century. The building was acquired by Henry Potter in 1866. He built a dock for trading vessels and a store on the site (since demolished) which he operated with his son until 1890, leaving it to his clerks, Robert Burns and Frank Young. In 1910 they moved the store, called Burns and Young, to Main Street in Old Saybrook. This marked the end of the North Cove neighborhood as a maritime commercial district. The house is now a private residence. The original Black Horse Tavern sign is now at the Connecticut Historical Society.

William Parker House (1646)

Parker House, Old Saybrook

The sign on the Parker House at 680 Middlesex Turnpike in Old Saybrook gives it the date of 1646. The National Register of Historic Places nomination for the house gives a date of 1679. In either case, it is one of the oldest houses in Connecticut. It was built by William Parker (1645-1725). Born in Hartford, Parker settled in Saybrook. As described in Family Records: Parker-Pond-Peck (1892), by Edwin Pond Parker:

Dea. William Parker was a leading citizen, and very prominent in church and state. He is said to have represented Saybrook as Deputy to the General Court in more sessions than any other person, excepting only Robert Chapman. He was Sergeant in Train-band as early as 1672, and in 1678-9 the town voted him five acres of land for services “out of the town” in the Indian wars. He was elected Deacon before 1687, and probably continued in that office until his death. He was a lay member of the Saybrook Synod of 1705 that framed the “Saybrook Platform” for the churches of Connecticut.

The house descended in the same family into the 1960s. It is now a commercial property.

Eleazar Fitch-John Ripley House and Store (1755)

Eleazar Fitch-John Ripley House and Store

At 19 Windham Green Road in Windham Center is a house built c. 1755. It has an attached structure on the east side that was once a store. The house has a nineteenth-century Victorian rear ell and the store has an eighteenth-century rear ell. The combined structure is known as the Eleazar Fitch-John Ripley House and Store. Col. Eleazer Fitch (1726-1796) served in the French and Indian War and served as high-sheriff of Windham County from 1752-1776. He later moved into a new grand house in 1763 that was destroyed by fire in 1923. During the Revolutionary War Fitch was a loyalist, although he was related by marriage to Windham’s leading revolutionary Eliphalet Dyer.