The house at 18 Church Street in Hebron was built in 1806 for Reverend Amos Bassett (1764-1828), who was pastor of the Hebron Congregational Church from 1794 to 1824. The Missionary Society of Connecticut was founded in a previous home of Rev. Bassett. The Bassett House is also known as the Kellogg-White House.
Surrounded by rolling meadows in the Bantam section of Litchfield, down Dudley Road, is the Charles Dudley House, which was built in 1815 and remained in the Dudley family until 1986. William Dudley of Guilford had acquired the land in 1733 and the house was built when his grandson, Charles A. Dudley (1812-1865), was 3 years old.
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Today, St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Hebron has a brick Federal style appearance, but when it was erected in 1826, it was more extravagantly Gothic, with numerous turrets and pinnacles. It was thought to have been modeled on a church that Rev. Samuel F. Jarvis had seen in Italy (and was even referred to as “Jarvis’ Folly”). At the time, Bishop Brownell said that it was the second most beautiful church in the diocese after Trinity Church in New Haven. An unusual feature of the design is that the tower is located at the rear of the building rather than the front. The building has had a number of alterations and renovations over the years. The parish was established in 1734, when the controversial Congregational minister Rev. John Bliss and his followers declared themselves for the Church of England and formed the sixth Episcopal church in Connecticut.
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Swedish immigrants in the town of Washington began work on a church adjacent to the bridge over the Shepaug River in the Washington Depot section of town in 1888 and it was dedicated on the Sunday before Christmas 1889. Originally known as the Swedish branch of the Congregational Church in Washington, the congregation split off on its own in 1892 to become the Salem Evangelical Covenant Church. That same year, other Swedish immigrants erected Trinity Lutheran Church just across the street. The Salem Covenant Church congregation relocated to a new church at 96 Baldwin Hill Road in 1977 and the old church building is now a private home.
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Daniel Nettleton (1766-1829) and his wife Eunice Baldwin Nettleton came from Milford in about 1789 and settled in the town of Washington in an area that came to be called Nettleton Hollow. Across from the original Nettleton homestead, their son Samuel (1791-1852) built the house at 230 Nettleton Hollow Road in in 1814. He moved into the new house while his parents and his brother, Lyman Nettleton, remained in the old homestead, which stood until it was taken down in 1867 by Samuel’s nephew, Treat Nettleton, who moved into an octagon house built for him nearby. The Samuel Nettleton House remained in the family for well over a century and a half.
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Just south of the Mill Pond, at 25 Main Street in the Ivoryton section of Essex, is a house built in 1809 by Daniel Griswold (1780-1870). In 1801 he had married Fanny Babcock (1779-1859). After her death in 1859, Daniel, who was then 79 years old, married Fanny Spencer. Daniel’s son William inherited the house. He would supply land for the new business enterprise of Comstock & Griswold, started in 1834 by his brother Edwin Griswold and Samuel M. Comstock, that would soon start producing ivory combs, launching the ivory industry in Ivoryton.
Jacob Pledger (1762-1822) emigrated from England in 1795 with the family of his wife, Sarah Watkinson, and settled in Middletown, where he worked as an agent for the Middletown Brewery. In 1800 he acquired land from his father-in-law Samuel Watkinson, Sr. (1745-1816) and in 1803 erected at 717 Newfield Street what is now one of five surviving brick Federal-style houses in Middletown. Pledger farmed the surrounding land, which was evenly divided along both sides of Newfield Street. [His daughter Eliza would be a student at Sara Pierce‘s Litchfield Female Academy in 1814] Samuel Miller (1782-1856) purchased the house and farm in 1813. It was later owned by his son, Augustus Henry Miller (1816-1895), and then by Augusts’ daughter, Bernice M. Dunklee (1872-1965), whose husband, Henry F. Dunklee (1905-1961), managed the farm. Their son, Earle M. Dunklee (1898-1976) acquired the property in 1953 and sold it to the city in 1969. The house was purchased by Dr. Peter Nelson in 1975 in a sale that included architectural covenants to protect the integrity of the building‘s historic structure. Dr. Nelson adapted the building into professional offices (it is home to Dr. Nelson’s Advanced Cosmetic Dentistry).
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