Colonial - Historic Buildings of Connecticut

Lathrop-Mathewson-Ross House (1761)

The Lathrop-Mathewson-Ross House is located on Ross Hill Road in Lisbon. It was built in 1761, possibly by Ezra Lathrop. Jeffery Mathewson acquired the property October 20, 1800. Almira J. Mathewson married George A. Ross, and their descendants owned the property until August 1958. Both Almira and then her daughter, Kate Mathewson Ross, kept diaries with daily entries covering 1873 to 1913. Victorian-era alterations were made to the house, including the addition of a projecting central gable over the front door and a full-length front porch. All of these additions were later removed under the direction of the famed restoration architect, Frederic Palmer. He worked with Edward Peace Friedland and Joan W. Friedland, who bought the Ross Farm in 1958. Edward Peace Friedland was an expert on eighteenth-century architecture and he and his wife were pioneers in historic preservation.

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Tomlinson-Boughton-Ward-Cassidy House (1763)

The house at 132 Main Street South in Woodbury sits on a hill just south of School Street. It was built in 1763 by Isaac Tomlinson and was owned early in the nineteenth century by John Boughton, a blacksmith. His blacksmith shop is believed to make up part of the barn on the property. Wallace G. Ward, a builder and president of the Woodbury Savings Bank, later owned and made a number of changes to the house, including replacing the original center chimney and lowering the windows so that his mother could more easily look outside. Since 1916 the house has been owned by the Cassidy family, which undertook restoration work in the mid-twentieth century.

Bushnell-Dickinson House (1790)

At 170 Old Post Road in Old Saybrook is a gambrel-roofed house built c. 1790 (before 1803) by Phineas Bushnell (1718-1803), shortly after he married his second wife, Hepsibah Lewis of Killingworth, in 1789. The house passed to his son Samuel Bushnell (1748-1828), who had married Hepzibah Pratt in 1775. Their daughter, Hepzibah (1776-1818), married Samuel Dickinson (1774-1861) in 1796. The house was later owned by their son, John Seabury Dickinson (1807-1879) and then by his son, John S. Dickinson (1846-1922), who served as a Town Selectman, was president of the Saybrook Musical and Dramatic Club and was a founder and first president of a literary society known as the Crackers and Cheese Club. The house remained in the Dickinson family until 1934. Renovated in 1958, the house was recently listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Captain William Johnson House (1790)

The Gambrel-roofed cape-style house at 29 Joshuatown Road at Hamburg Bridge in Lyme is architecturally distinguished. It is the only surviving example in the state of a distinctive type of chimney vaulting: an arched passage through a split chimney, with an elaborate doorway surround at the back of the passage. The house was built c. 1790-1803 by Captain William Johnson. He was a mason and the second floor has a large arch-ceilinged room that was used as a Masonic Hall. Captain Johnson died in 1818 and widow Mitty soon sold the house, although she returned to Hamburg Bridge in 1848 and bought another house on Joshuatown Road.

Remember Baker House (1733)

Ethan Allen’s parents were married in the house at 112 Sentry Hill Road in Roxbury. The house was built by John Baker around 1733. John’s daughter Mary Baker married Joseph Allen in 1736 or 1737. Their son, Ethan Allen, was born in Litchfield in 1737 or 1738. John’s son, Remember Baker, married Tamar Warner. He was killed in a hunting accident. Remember Baker, Jr. (1737-1775) was only three years old at time. He grew up in the house and nearby lived his cousins, Ethan Allen and Seth Warner. He later joined them in Vermont as one of the Green Mountain Boys who first battled the forces of New York State and then joined the Revolution and captured Fort Ticonderoga on May 10, 1775. Described by another cousin, Norman Hurlbut, as a great frontiersman, a tough, redheaded, freckle-faced young giant, Remember Baker was more hot headed than Allen or Warner. Later in 1775 he left Ticonderoga on a scouting expedition and was killed on August 22 by two Indians who had taken his boat. They cut off his head and placed it on a pole and carried it to Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu. British officers there bought the head and buried it. The Baker family occupied the house in Roxbury until 1796. A later owner of the house was Treat Davidson, a prominent citizen of Roxbury who served as a Selectman and owned a gristmill.

Palmer-Warner House (1738)

Construction of the house at 307 Town Street in East Haddam is traditionally attributed to John Warner (1677-1750) of Hatfield, Massachusetts, c. 1738. He had married Mahitable Chapman Richardson, widow of Lemuel Richardson and daughter of John Chapman, a wealthy East Haddam landowner. The house’s current exterior features date to c. 1790, around the time John‘s grandson, Oliver Warner, was married. Both John and Oliver were skilled blacksmiths who produced hardware such as hinges and latches, some of which are still within the house. There is also a barn on the property that may date to the same period as the house. Adjacent to the property is the Warner family burying ground, now owned by the Town of East Haddam. The house remained in the Warner family until after the Civil War.

In 1936 Frederic C. Palmer (1901-1971), a pioneer restoration architect, acquired the house and restored it the following year, filling it with antiques. Palmer was commissioned to rehabilitate two East Haddam landmarks, the Goodspeed Opera House and the First Church of Christ Congregational. For the Antiquarian and Landmarks Society (now Connecticut Landmarks) he restored the Buttolph-Williams House in Wethersfield and the Joshua Hempsted House in New London. After Palmer’s death his partner, Howard A Metzger (1921-2005), continued to live in the house, leaving it with an endowment to become a museum of Connecticut Landmarks. Although currently maintained by CT Landmarks, the house has yet to be opened as a museum due to financial and other issues.

Rev. Joseph Strong House (1778)

The house at 30 Huntington Lane in Norwich was built in 1778 for Reverend Joseph Strong (1753-1834). As related in the History of Norwich (1874), by Frances Manwaring Caulkins:

On the 18th of March, 1778, Mr. Joseph Strong was ordained as colleague pastor with Dr. [Benjamin] Lord [of the First Congregational Church]. The audience, gathered from all parts of the county, was unexampled in point of numbers, and the services were unusually solemn. Dr. Lord was eighty-four years of age, venerated and beloved by all, but small and frail in appearance, while his colleague, in the full glow of youth and health, large and stoutly built, stood over him like a sheltering oak. [. . .]

Mr. Strong was the son of the Rev. Nathan Strong of Coventry. By his mother’s side, he was descended from the Williams family, who were taken captives by the Indians at Deerfield, in the night of Feb. 28, 1704. The general circumstances of this tragedy are well known. The two little daughters of Mr. Williams who went into captivity with their father were named Eunice and Esther. The former was never redeemed, but being adopted into the family of a chief, she became attached to the Indian manners and customs, refused to return to her relatives, embraced the Roman Catholic religion, and married a chief named Roger Toroso, who resided at St. Johns, twenty miles from Montreal. Esther was ransomed and returned home with her father. She married the Rev. Mr. Meachum of Coventry, and one of her daughters became the wife of the Rev. Nathan Strong, who was ordained pastor of a Second Congregational Church in Coventry, in 1745, and was the father of the Rev. Nathan Strong, D. D., of Hartford, and the Rev. Joseph Strong, D. D., of Norwich. At the ordination of the latter, the sermon was preached by his brother, and the charge given by his father. [. . .]

Dr. Strong in person was above the middle size and stature, and he had a calm dignity of address which impressed every one with respect. This dignity, however, was blended with great kindness and courtesy, and his manners, far from inspiring awe, were gentle and attractive. In his latter years especially, it was delightful to listen to his conversation, flowing as it did in an easy, graceful stream, enlivened with anecdotes and enriched with sketches of character, curious incidents, and all the varied stores collected by an observant mind through long years of experience.

Rev. Strong married Mary Huntington. Their house was built on land her father, Jabez Huntington, had acquired from Peter Morgan. As related in Old Houses of the Antient Town of Norwich (1895), by Mary Elizabeth Perkins:

Mrs. Strong received from her father a large amount of additional land, both in 1784 and at his death in 1786, and Dr. Strong also bought adjoining land, so that their domain covered many acres, but the house site was on the Morgan land. We do not know when the Morgan house disappeared. After the death of Rev. Joseph Strong, the homestead was inherited by his son, Henry Strong [who became a lawyer], and is now in the possession of the latter’s daughter, Mary, wife of the late Dr. Daniel Gulliver.