Charles Boardman House (1753)

At 48 Main Street in Middletown, just south of the Inn at Middletown, is a center-chimney colonial house built in 1753. In that year, Constant Kirtland sold the property with a partially erected house to Charles Boardman, who completed and first occupied the structure. It was next acquired by Charles Chadwick in 1758. Chadwick erected the barn that still stands behind the house. Deacon Joseph Clark bought the property in 1762 and operated an apothecary in the building. The building continued to be used for mixed commercial/residential purposes for over a century. In the late 1970s the house was restored and adapted for new commercial use as part of a redevelopment planned by preservationist John F. Reynolds III (which included the relocation and restoration of the houses now at 49,  61 and 73 Main Street).

Heman Brainard House (1794)

According to Portrait of a River Town: The History and Architecture of Haddam, Connecticut (1984), by Janice P. Cunningham and Elizabeth Ann Warner, the house at 366 Saybrook Road in the Higganum section of Haddam was erected by Heman Brainerd (1754-1803) on land deeded to him in 1784 by his father, Phineas Brainerd (1720-1803), one of the original settlers of Higganum. It was described as a “new Dwelling House” in a 1794 deed, although town acessor’s records date the house to 1729. After the death of Heman’s widow, the house was purchased by James Gladwin and remained in his family for the rest of the nineteenth century. Dr. William H. Tremaine (1815-1883), a noted physician, lived in the house from 1850 to 1857, before he moved to Hartford. The house’s original stairway and chimney, destroyed by fire in the nineteenth century, were rebuilt by its later twentieth century owners.

John Wetmore House (1780)

In 1762, John Wetmore of Middlefield married his first cousin, Lois (a not uncommon practice among eighteenth-century farming families seeking to keep holdings within a larger family network). Circa 1780, the couple erected a house on land in Middlefield, owned by John’s father, Deacon Caleb Wetmore (1706-1788) who, unusually for the time, deeded the land to his niece and daughter-in-law Lois in 1786. The couple later deeded the property to their son, Captain John Wetmore, but during the 1790s, when Connecticut farmers were facing difficult times, he moved to Litchfield, where he died in 1847, and his brothers, Josiah, Azariah and James moved to Ohio. In eleven years the property had five different owners, but was them purchased by Jacob Miller and remained in his family until the early twentieth century. Located at 18 Maple Street, the Wetmore-Miller House has an early-twentieth century Colonial Revival entry portico.

David Adams, Jr. House (1770)

The house at 4 West Simsbury Road in Canon was built c. 1760 or 1770 (the latter date is indicated by a sign on the house) by David Adams, Jr. (1740-1834). For many years, the house, located along a stagecoach line, was used as a tavern operated by Gen. Ezra Adams (1751-1836), who built a house nearby. He was also a leather-worker, making boots, saddles and harnesses. Ezra and George Adams ran a store in a small building connected to the main house. This building also served as a post office after George’s brother, Oliver Adams, was appointed postmaster in 1842. The building was removed in 1906 and the mail was moved to the main house, which had two front doors at the time. The last postmaster was Mary Vining Adams (wife of Henry H. Adams), who ran the post office from 1923 to 1937. For many years, the role of postmaster was shared back and forth with members of the Weed family (in 1826, Dr. Benjamin Weed became the first first postmaster in North Canton).

The property was later owned by Louis Diehms, who used the house as an antiques shop. In 1953, Mary and Whitney Jennison purchased the house, which they restored. They discovered evidence that the house once had a gambrel roof. On November 8, 1962, the restored house was one of five old houses in Canton opened to the public as part of a house tour to benefit a landscaping project at the Cherry Brook Elementary School. An article announcing the tour and focusing on the Jennison House appeared in the Hartford Courant on Sunday, October 28, 1962.

Joel Clemons House (1755)

The house at 1062 Bantam Road, in Bantam section of Litchfield, was built by Joel Clemons c. 1755-1756, shortly after he acquired the land from his father John. Joel married Sarah Pettibone in 1757. Aaron Bradley and his son-in-law, Henry Wadsworth, proprietors of the Bradley Tavern, owned the house in the 1820s. James K. Wallace and his wife, Abigail Kilbourn Wallace, bought the property in 1826. Their son, Dr. James K. Wallace, practiced medicine in the house. The Wallace family raised the house from being a one-and-a-half story cape to a full two stories. The house’s ell was once the parsonage of the Baptist Church and was moved from its original site on Cathole Road. A different door has been installed since 1987, when a photograph of the house was taken for the Historical and Architectural Resources Survey of Litchfield, Connecticut: The Bantam/Milton Area (1987). In recent years the house was home to Gilyard’s Outfitters, Ltd.