Elisha Steel House (1720)

The house at 64 Tolland Green in Tolland was built around 1720. From 1765, the residence was home to Elisha Steel. As described in Waldo’s Early History of Tolland (1861)

Elisha Steel, the son of Rev. Stephen Steel, married Sarah Wolcott, of Windsor, April 26, 1758. He graduated at Yale College in 1750, was educated for the bar, located in the town of Tolland, and engaged in the practice of his profession. He was chosen a representative in the General Assembly in 1761, and was reelected five times. He was one of the two Justices of the Peace from 1761 to 1766 inclusive. He was the first lawyer ever located in the town of Tolland, and the only one while he lived. He died August 17, 1773.

Captain William Bull Tavern (1745)

Happy Thanksgiving!! The Captain William Bull Tavern in Litchfield was built around 1745 on a farm on the East Litchfield Road, part of the Hartford to Albany highway. It is not known who built the house, but Capt. Bull was the owner of the farm by the 1790s. He had served at the capture of Fort Ticonderoga in 1775. The house passed through various owners until Frederick Fuessenich of Torrington purchased it in 1923. By that time it had fallen into disrepair and was in danger of being dismantled. Fuessenich saved it and moved the building to a new site about two miles away, placing it across from where the old tollhouse on the Torrington Turnpike had once stood. Fuessenich, an avid collector of antiques, restored and furnished the house, which he renamed the Tollgate Hill Tavern. (The house was featured in an article in the September 1925 issue of Country Life magazine). He also brought other colonial buildings to his property to create a period ambiance, including a house believed to have been the first school house used in the town of Berlin. The antiques collection was dispersed during the Depression. In the 1930s, Fuessenich and his wife established an inn at the Tavern. The Inn has since continued under various owners and the kitchen was completely renovated in 2003.

Woodward House (1740)

On the northwest corner of Bethlehem Green is a saltbox house built in 1740 by Samuel Church. In 1797, his daughter Betsy Church married David Bird and the house became known as the Bird Tavern. According to The History of the Descendants of Elder John Strong, of Northampton, Mass. (1871), by Benjamin W. Dwight, their son, Joshua Bird, was “for 30 years a woolen manufacturer at Bethlehem (1820-50), and for 20 years past (1850-70) a farmer there, a deacon in Ihe Cong. Ch. for 25 years (1845-70), a state senator (in 1859).” He also helped fugitive slaves and his house was a stop on the Underground Railroad. The house also served as the town’s post office. James W. Flynn, who purchased the house around 1900, served as postmaster and town clerk in the early twentieth century. Flynn and his wife Mary later shared the house with their foster child, Mary E. Toman. She married Charles Woodward, the son of a local farmer, and the couple inherited the house. It later passed to other owners, but in recent years was restored to become a restaurant called the Woodward House.

Gen. Gold Selleck Silliman House (1756)

Known as “The Orchard,” the Gen. Gold Selleck Silliman House is located at 506 Jennings Road in Fairfield. A general in the Revolutionary War, Silliman took part in the Battle of Ridgefield in 1777. In May 1779, Silliman and his son were captured in their home by a party of tories who had crossed Long Island Sound in the night. U.S. Navy Captain David Hawley later captured Thomas Jones, a highly reputed loyalist, to exchange for Silliman a year after his capture. Gen. Silliman‘s house was also used as a place of refuge by citizens fleeing the British burning of Fairfield on July 8, 1779. Gen. Silliman’s son, Benjamin Silliman, became the first professor of science at Yale University and the first to distill petroleum.

Jabez Smith House (1793)

The Jabez Smith House in Groton has remained virtually unchanged since it was built in 1783. The original farmer on the property, in 1652, was Nehemiah Smith, who raised sheep and horses and grew flax and tobacco. His descendant, Nathan Smith, built the current house after the original house burned down. He then passed it on to his son, Jabez and two more generations of Smiths followed in the house. It was later used by Ann Graham Clarke of New York as a weekend retreat. She left it to the town in 1974 and, after her death in 1980, the house became a museum.