Josiah Boardman House (1734)

Josiah Boardman (1705-1781) was one of the earliest settlers of the Westfield section of Middletown. He acquired land there in 1727, but is thought to have built his house (at the current address of 953 East Street) circa 1734, the year he married Rachel Cole. The house was later expanded, probably at an early date, with a two-bay addition to the north of the original five-bay section. The house also has a modern garage. Josiah Boardman is described as follows in the Commemorative Biographical Record of Middlesex County, Connecticut (1903):

Josiah Boardman, the third in the above named family, removed from his native town of Wethersfield to Middletown and settled with the Westfield Society November 29, 1727. Samuel Galpin, of Kensington parish, Middletown, sold to Josiah Boardman, of the same parish, IOO acres of land in the northwest corner of Middletown. The farm of his brother, Edward, lay next to it. Josiah and wife joined the Kensington Congregational Church, which was nearer their home than that of Middletown, and he held membership in this congregation at the time of his death, January 29, 1781. On August 5, 1734, he was married to Rachel Cole, who was born in 1712, and died February 29, 1782, the mother of ten children[.]

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William Barton House (1765)

The house at 25 Barton Hill Street in East Hampton was built circa 1765. The gambrel-roofed house has three dormer windows that were added in the nineteenth century. It is not known who built the house, but in 1807 the property was acquired by William Barton (1762-1849), who was the father of bell manufacturing in East Hampton (which became known as Belltown, U.S.A.). The Bevin Brothers, who were apprentices in Barton’s shop, later started their own bell factory in town, which is still in business today. The house remained in the Barton family until 1953. As related in Historic Towns of the Connecticut River Valley (1906), by George S. Roberts:

The prosperity and industrial spirit of East Hampton was very largely due to William Barton, who was born in Windsor in 1762. William Barton, the father, was a captain in Colonel Flower’s Regiment of Artillery Artificers, in the Revolution and his son William was with him as assistant. He learned his trade from his father, who was armorer in Springfield in the Revolutionary War. At the close of the war, William returned to Wintonbury, in Windsor, and made pistols and other arms. In 1790, he went to New York and started the manufacture of articles made of brass, especially andirons. He remained there for eighteen years and in 1808, went to East Hampton where he made hand bells and sleigh bells. William Barton was a man of broad mind, who loved his fellow man. He was never so happy as when benefiting others and improving the condition of the community in which he lived and worked. He taught his trade to others and it was not long before East Hampton became a thriving and prosperous community. In 1826, Mr. Barton went to Cicero, New York, where his happy influence was strongly felt. In 1846, he returned to his old home in East Hampton to spend the remaining years of his life, surrounded by his children and the friends and neighbors who honored and loved him. His death occurred, after a long life of usefulness, in 1849.

Old Mystic Inn (1784)

John Denison (1716-1808) and his son Nathan (born 1759) were both hatters in Old Mystic. John bought land from Samuel Williams in 1783 and then sold it to Nathan in 1785, by which time the house that exists today at 52 Main Street had most likely been built, along with their hatters shop. In 1787, Nathan Denison sold the property to his brother-in-law John Baldwin (1752-1814). The property had two other owners in the next decade and was acquired by Nicholas Williams (1770-1802) in 1799. His widow, Lucretia Hempstead Williams (1776-1851) willed the property to ten people, with six people getting shares in the house. The house has had many owners over the years. In the 1930s, it was owned by the Williams family, who owned a general store across the street from 1875 to 1967. Charles Vincent bought the property in 1959 and ran the Old Mystic Book Shop in the house until 1986. Since 1987 the house has been a bed-and-breakfast called the Old Mystic Inn. In 1988 a carriage house was added to the property, doubling the number of guest rooms.

Giles Hall House (1717)

In the early eighteenth century, English colonists were encroaching on the land of the Wangunk tribe in the area of Indian Hill in Portland. In 1716 the Connecticut General Assembly permitted Giles Hall, a mariner and shipbuilder, to purchase Wangunk land at Indian Hill, which he and others soon developed as a shipbuilding center. When Hall sold the land in 1739, there was a house at what is now 643 Main Street, which he may have built c. 1717, the same year he built a road to the Connecticut River through the Wangunk reservation to transport shipbuilding materials. It is possible that the current front of the house was constructed when it was the home of shipbuilder John Abby in the 1820s, with the rear section from 1717 forming an ell that was destroyed by fire in the early twentieth century.

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Nathaniel Phelps, Jr. House (1734)

The house at 192 Hope Valley Road in Hebron is a Colonial Cape built in 1734 by Lt. Nathaniel Phelps, Jr. (1703-1781) His father, Capt. Nathaniel Phelps, Sr. (1677-1746) and uncle, Timothy Phelps (1663-1729), were among the first settlers of Hebron in 1690. The area where the house was erected became known as Hopevale and today’s Hope Valley Road was called the “Highway from Hebron to Hopevale.” Among the house’s later owners were the Rebillard, Porter and Coats families.

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