Rev. Rufus Hawley House (1799)

Rev. Rufus Hawley (1741-1826) was born in East Granby, graduated from Yale in 1767 and was ordained pastor of the Northiugton (now Avon) Congregational Church on Dec. 20, 1769. He continued as minister until his resignation in 1817. In December of that year, the old Northington meeting house burned down. Believed to have been a case of arson (suspicion even fell on the minister himself), the fire came at the time of an intense dispute within the church concerning where in town a new meeting house should be built. Eventually the congregation split, with the majority deciding to construct what is now the West Avon Congregational Church, located in the center of town, while the rest built the Avon Congregational Church, located in the commercial center of Avon. Rev. Hawley continued as a pastor at the West Avon Church until his death in 1826.

Rufus Hawley kept detailed journals in which he recorded his daily activities between 1763 and 1812. In a recent book about Hawley, Catch’d on Fire: The Journals of Rufus Hawley of Avon, Connecticut, author Nora Oakes Howard makes extensive use of these journals. Hawley built the fourth house he owned in Avon in 1798-1799. Located at 281 Old Farms Road, it was notable for having two side-by-side kitchens in the rear. Known as Avonside, it remained in the family for many years after the minister’s death. It passed to his son, Rufus Forward Hawley, who sold it to his nephew, Edward Eugene Hawley in 1837. After his death in 1868, it passed to Edward’s daughters, Florence Genevieve Hawley, who used it as a summer home, and then to Bertha H. Hawley. It was then inherited by their nephew, Reginald Birney of West Hartford, who died in 1936. Damaged by fire in 1950, the house was sold by Birney’s widow in 1951 to Robert and Gladys August, who also became the guardians of the Hawley family papers, including the journals. They owned the house until 1998. In 2002, the Hawley family archives were donated to the Avon Free Public Library.

Rev. Joseph Graves House (1775)

On Miner Street, in the Westfield section of Middletown, across from the Third Congregational Church, is a house built sometime between 1775 and 1800, by Rev. Joseph Graves, first pastor of the Westfield Baptist Church. Rev. Graves was a descendent of Deacon John Graves, whose 1685 house is located in Madison. The house passed to Joseph Graves’s son, Josiah Graves, who also succeeded his father as Baptist minister. The house was in the family until 1884. It has matching additions on either side of the front facade.

Ephraim Kirby House (1773)

The house at 113 South Street in Litchfield was completed around 1773 for Ephraim Kirby (it is also known as the Reynolds Marvin-Ephraim Kirby House). A veteran of the Revolutionary War, Ephraim Kirby became an attorney and in 1789 compiled the first volume of state law reports in the country. In 1804, President Thomas Jefferson appointed Kirby as the first Superior Court Judge of the Mississippi Territory. Kirby traveled to Fort Stoddert, in what is now Alabama, and died a few months later. His grandson was Edmund Kirby Smith, the Confederate general. The Kirby House was completely transformed in the early twentieth century with numerous Colonial Revival alterations.

Captain David Riley House (1710)

A descendent of James Riley, who settled in Wethersfield in 1645, Captain David Riley built the house at 3 Riverview Road, just off Old Main Street in Rocky Hill, in 1710. Capt. Riley was a ship captain and so many of his sons and grandsons, who were also mariners, built houses near his that the intersection was once known as Riley’s Corner. In the later nineteenth century, the house was owned by Dr. Rufus Griswold, a physician. Dr. Griswold had earlier been a journalist as well. An editor of the Brooklyn Morning Journal and the New York Empire City, according to one source, “he became a prominent contributor to American medical journals and one of the leading members of the medical profession in Connecticut.” He was also the guiding spirit of the Rocky Hill Lyceum, which sponsored debates and lectures and whose members met at his home. The house has recently been restored.