Theodore Walker House (1829)

According to Homes of Old Woodbury (published by the Old Woodbury Historical Society in 1959), on January 21, 1829, Theodore Walker and his brother Joseph purchased an acre of land to build their homes on Washington Road in Woodbury. Theodore built his house, at 13 Washington Road, later that year and on November 7, 1829 deeded half of the land to his brother, who built his own house next door the following year. The original large center chimney of the Theodore Walker House was removed in the 1930s. The Walker brothers were great-great-great-grandsons of Zaccharias Walker, the first Congregational minister in Woodbury.

Honan Funeral Home (1790)

The house at 58 Main Street in Newtown was built c. 1790 and is now the Honan Funeral Home. In 1912, the house was purchased by William A. Honan, Sr., who had just married Margaret Hayes of Sandy Hook. It was then a two-family house, with the Honan family residing in one half and renting the other half. Honan had established his undertaking business in 1903 and stored his embalming and funeral equipment in a garage and storage rooms behind the house. He tore down the garage in 1938 and erected a new building for his funeral home, with the business on the first floor and a rental apartment on the second floor. Honen died in 1966 and in 1969 his son, William Honan, Jr, moved the funeral home into the house at 58 Main Street. He made extensive renovations to the building and the new funeral home reopened in 1970. The current Funeral Director of the three-generation business is Daniel T. Honan.

Chrysler House (1825)

Built circa 1825-1830, the house at 15 Chaplin Street in Chaplin is known as the Chrysler House for the family that owned it for much of he twentieth century. The least ornate of the three brick houses in the Chaplin Historic District (the others are the Whitter House and the Goodell House), all built around the same time), the Chrysler House has been much altered over the years. A front porch, which covered part of the original fan light over the door, was later removed, but the fan light remains filled in. The interior has been altered, with the original central stairs replaced by a large parlor. A notable resident of the house was Sidney V. Chrysler, a puppeteer whose puppet theater was housed in an ell of the house. The theater is now part of the collections of the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at UCONN.

Clark-Bailey House (1828)

The house at 381 Saybrook Road in Higganum in Haddam was built in 1828 by Silas Clark, who lost it a year later in a lawsuit. Asahel P. Bailey purchased the house in 1849. Bailey was a wood turner who later became a blacksmith and worked for the D. & H. Scoville Hoe Company. After Bailey’s death in 1901, one of his two daughters, Sabra, and her husband, Frederic Kelsey occupied the house until the early 1930s. The house remained in the extended Bailey family until 1938.

Joseph Hale House (1820)

Located at 112 Main Street in the Rockfall neighborhood of Middlefield is a house built c. 1820 by Joseph Hale. He had received the land from his uncle in 1819, after his marriage to Julia Stow (died 1843). As executor, Hale settled the estate of his father-in-law, Joshua Stow, and then sold the house to Freeman Johnson in 1849. Hale moved to Ohio, where he died in 1855. Johnson sold the house to his son, Ira N. Johnson, who manufactured pistols. As related in the History of Middlefield and Long Hill (1883), by Thomas Atkins,

[the] Pistol factory was erected by a company of young men, namely, Henry Aston, Ira N. Johnson, Sylvester Bailey, John North, Nelson Aston, and Peter Ashton. They took a large contract of the government of the United States for making pistols; an additional contract was granted them. When the work was finished the property was put up at auction by the company, and Ira N. Johnson was the highest bidder, and the property came to him in 1852. Since then, the manufacture of pistols and other things has been carried on by Johnson and others up to the time the factory was burned, which was on the night of the 21st of Sept., 1879.