Historic Buildings of Connecticut

Exploring the Nutmeg State One Building at a Time

Colonial

Thomas Greer House (1796)

At 2 Riverside Place at Gales Ferry on the Thames River in Ledyard is a gambrel-roofed house built c. 1796 that is now connected to a much larger addition. The building is owned and operated by the Yale heavyweight crew team and is used to prepare for the nation’s oldest intercollegiate sporting event, the Harvard-Yale Regatta, known as The Race. Yale’s complex at Gales Ferry includes a boathouse. The 1796 house was built by Thomas Geer, who sold it to Capt. Alexander Allyn in 1799. It passed to his daughter Sarah, who married Norman B. Brown, Gales Ferry postmaster. It remained in the family until 1904. It was then acquired by George St. John Sheffield, a great benefactor of Yale rowing (and the son of Joseph Earl Sheffield), and the University purchased the property in 1907.

The house at 51 Main Street in Essex was built in 1803 by Thomas Millard, a shipcarver and housewright, and was the home of Felix Starkey from 1805 to 1856. Felix Starkey (1777-1856) was a merchant and the brother of Timothy Starkey. He married Esther Hayden. (The sign on the house reads “Timothy Starkey 1720”).

John Rose House (1747)

The John Rose House at 48 Bradley Street. in Branford was built c. 1747. The house was later altered in the Federal period. By 1897 the house was owned by John Buckley, who worked at Malleable Iron Fittings (MIF), which by 1915 was the largest employer in Branford.

James Hall House (1786)

The house at 15 High Street in Suffield on the Green is an example of an eighteenth-century Cape Cod with very modern and large dormer windows. Known as the James Hall House, it was built in 1786.

Worthington Meetinghouse (1774)

Colonial-era congregational meetinghouses served as a place for both religious services and town meetings. They often resembled large houses and did not always have steeples. The Worthington Meetinghouse (723 Worthington Ridge in Berlin) was built in 1774 with no steeple. One was added in 1790, but the building has since been restored to its original look without a steeple. The congregational church in Worthington (the west side of Berlin) had split from the church in Kennsington (the east side of Berlin) in 1772. A fire damaged the building in 1848. Although it was soon repaired, church members decided to erect a new church (now the Berlin Congregational Church) down the road. No longer a house of worship, the building continued its public function as the Worthington Town Hall. The large open space insde was divided into two floors: upstairs for town meetings and downstairs for a school with two classrooms. In 1907 the entire building became a school with a total of four classrooms. The old Meetinghouse served as a school until 1957, when it became the offices of the Berlin Board of Education. The building became vacant in the 1970s when it was declared unsafe. The inside was gutted around that time, but work halted, leaving the interior unfinished. Local residents have been working to restore the building as a community cultural center and museum.

Timothy Bradley House (1730)

The Timothy Bradley House, 12 Bradley Street in Branford, was built c.1730. Its original owner was Rachel Swaine, daughter of Daniel Swaine and wife of Joseph Browne, who she married in 1726. The house was sold to Timothy Bradley in 1778 and it remained in the Bradley family almost a century.

Rev. John Elliott House (1789)

The house at 542 Boston Post Road in Madison was built in 1789. It has a later three sided oriel window, which was added to the second story on the east side of the front facade. The house was the residence of Rev. John Elliott, who the third minister of Madison’s Congregational Church. As related by Rev. James A. Gallup in the Historical Discourse Delivered on the One Hundred and Seventieth Anniversary of the Formation of the First Congregational Church, Madison, Conn., November 18, 1877 (1878):

Rev. John Elliott, D.D., the third pastor of this church, was born in Killingworth (now Clinton), August 24, 1768. He was the son of Deacon George Elliott, and grandson of the Rev. Jared Elliott, M.D., of Killingworth (now Clinton), and great-grandson of Rev. Joseph Elliott, of Guilford, who was the son of the Rev. John Elliott, of Roxbury, well known as the Apostle to the Indians. He fitted for college in his native town, under the instruction of the Rev. Mr. Mansfield, his pastor, and entered Yale College in 1782. He took a high rank as a scholar, and graduated with honor in 1786. He devoted several years to teaching and the study of theology. He preached his first sermon July 11th, 1790, in Rev. Mr. Todd’s pulpit in East Guilford. During the last year of Mr. Todd’s ministry he was much of the time unable to preach, and, at his request, Mr. Elliott was employed by the society to preach for him. After Mr. Todd’s death the pulpit was supplied for a time by the neighboring ministers.

In November of 1791, Rev. Elliott was settled as the church’s new minister. He served until his death, on December 17, 1824. Quoting again from Rev. Gallup:

He was but twenty-three years of age at the time of his ordination. He is described as remarkably sedate, dignified and solemn in manner, judicious and exemplary in conduct, precise in speech, and methodical in all his movements. He was tall, slender, and erect in form, and wore always the cocked hat, short breeches, long waistcoat and stockings, and buckled shoes of the gentlemen of the ancient time. As he is remembered by some who hear me this morning, in the latter part of his life his head was bald and his hair white. His measured step and grave bearing, both out of the pulpit and in it, made him seem to his people the very embodiment of reverence.

[. . . .] Dr. Elliott was married November 3, 1792, to Sarah Norton, daughter of Lot Norton, of Salisbury, Conn. They had no children. His wife survived him, and afterwards removed to Salisbury. She was subsequently married to Gen. Sterling.

She married General Elisha Sterling of Salisbury in 1830 and died in 1841.