Harry Shepard House (1825)

Harry Shepard (1794-1839) was the youngest son of Abel Shepard, a shipbuilder in Middle Haddam. Abel gave land to his three sons and Harry built a house on his allotment (now 119 Moodus Road) in 1825. The house is transitional between the Federal and Greeek Revival styles. It was inherited by his son, Charles, who had worked for a time as a tinsmith in Cobalt, and remained in the Shepard family until 1946.

Jonathan S. Wilcox House (1830)

Housed at the William L. Clements Library at the University of Michigan are the diaries of Jonathan Samuel Wilcox (1791-1875), a Madison storekeeper. Covering nearly thirty years (1844-1875), the diaries document Wilcox’s business and religious activities (he describes his church attendance and evaluates the sermons he heard there, sometimes after attending three sermons at three different churches on the same day), as well as his political involvement. A staunch Democrat, Wilcox was hostile to abolitionists and opposed the Civil War. Several of his children and other relatives lived in Augusta, Georgia (collections of family letters are held by libraries at Yale and the University of Georgia. Wilcox’s own house, built in the Federal-style in 1830, is located at 558 Boston Post Road across from the Green in Madison.

Bowden Hall, Cheshire Academy (1796)

Bowden Hall, part of the campus of Cheshire Academy, is the oldest schoolhouse still in continuous use in the state of Connecticut. Located at the corner of Academy Road and Highland Avenue in Cheshire, it was erected in 1796 for the Episcopal Academy, which would become the Cheshire School in 1903, the Roxbury School in 1917 and finally Cheshire Academy in 1937. As described in Edwin R. Brown’s Old Historic Homes of Cheshire (1895):

The original academy was erected in the year 1796. This included only the square building north of Bronson Hall; the corner-stone was laid with Masonic honors, April 28, 1796. An address was delivered on this occasion by Rev. Reuben Ives, through whose influence, more than of any other one man, the academy was established [in 1794] at Cheshire. He was followed by Rev. Dr. Bronson [the Academy’s first principal], who delivered an able and appropriate address. This is the oldest institution of its kind in this country, being for many years the most celebrated seat of learning in the State, under the control of the Episcopal Church, and, until the formation of Trinity College, was both college and seminary for this and other dioceses. For several years this institution was open for the instruction of young ladies, and several in this town, and some from other towns, took advantage of this excellent and unusual opportunity for those days.

Until 1865, Bowden Hall was the school‘s only building. Many have been constructed since. In 1867, Bronson Hall was built just north of Bowden Hall and attached to the older building by a passageway. (more…)

Rev. William T. Reynolds House (1825)

The earliest residents of the hip-roofed brick Federal-style house at 2 Washington Avenue – 1 St. John Street in North Haven are not known. Much altered over the years, the house was built c. 1825 on the site where the c. 1680 homestead of Nathaniel Thorpe once stood. In the later nineteenth century the house was the residence of Rev. William T. Reynolds, who was pastor of the North Haven Congregational Church from 1863 to 1893. The house is now an office property.