Samuel Parmelee (or Parmalee) was a mariner in Branford who built the Federal-style cottage now at 41 Bradley Street in 1804 (it may have been moved from an original location at 259 Main Street, c. 1900). Samuel Parmelee drowned in Long Island Sound in 1813.
William Shelton (1805-1860) was a hat maker in Windsor who filled orders for customers as far away as Philadelphia. In 1830 he built the transitional Federal/Greek Revival house at 40 Pleasant Street. It was constructed of bricks from William Mack’s brickyard, which opened that year at the foot (east end) of Pleasant Street. Behind Shelton’s house was an industrial area along Mill Brook where he made his hats. The house currently contains antique furniture that was brought back from the attic and barn and restored.
As described in View from the Top: The Story of Prospect, Connecticut (Biographical Publishing Company: 1995), by John R. Guevin, the house at 3 Union City Road in Prospect was built by Asahel Chittenden, who served in the Revolutionary War, enlisting in 1780. He married Anna Lewis in 1783 and ten years later acquired land from his father-in-law John Lewis, a congregational minister, to build the house. In 1803 Chittenden opened a store in his home, which also had an upstairs ballroom. After his death in 1813, the property was left to his widow, who remarried in 1816 to Robert Hotchkiss. Asahel’s son, Edward Chittenden, later owned the house. From 1828 to 1830 he served as first town clerk of the newly established Town of Prospect and also became postmaster in 1830. He sold the house in 1833 to Woodward Hotchkiss and in 1839 moved to Waterbury, where he became proprietor of a tavern called the Mansion House. In 1852 Hotchkiss sold the building to Harris Platt and his wife Lucinda. It is now home to Pavlik Real Estate.
The house at 45 Nod Road in Avon was built c. 1785-1789. It has been much altered over the years, acquiring several additions. In the 1830s the house was owned by Amasa Woodford, who was part of the movement that led to Avon becoming an independent town in 1830. Part of the Woodford family farm, which has been in continuous operation since 1666, is now the Pickin’ Patch on Nod Road.
In 1905 the house was acquired by Joseph Wright Alsop IV (1876-1953), a gentleman farmer, insurance executive and member of a well-known political family. Alsop was a member of Connecticut’s House of Representatives, 1907-1908 and state senate, 1909-1912. He also served as a First Selectman in Avon from 1922 to 1950. He was married to Corinne Robinson Alsop (1886-1971), a niece of President Theodore Roosevelt and a leading suffragist. Corinne Robinson Alsop who served in the state House of Representatives in 1924–1927 and again in 1931–1933. While owned by the Alsops, the house was part of their large stock-breading and dairy business called Wood Ford Farm. They added the house’s Colonial Revival front portico in the 1930s. Her husband died in 1953 and in 1956 Corinne remarried to Francis W. Cole, former chairman of the Travelers Insurance Company.
In 1819 the Reverend Grove L. Brownell (1790-1855), the first minister of the North Congregational Church in Woodbury, acquired land where he soon (by 1824) erected a house. After Rev. Brownell left Woodbury in 1840, the house was deeded to three trustees, who then passed it on in 1845 to the church’s next minister, Rev. John Churchill (1811-1880). Between 1850 and 1853, Rev. Churchill moved the house to its current location at 94 Main Street South and built a larger house for himself on the original site. He sold the old house in 1855. The original rear of the house was replaced by a new addition around 1894.
The house at 20 Church Street in North Haven was built c. 1780-1800. It was the home of Alfred Linsley in the mid to late-nineteenth century. Today the former residence is home to the Murray-Reynolds American Legion Post 76.
The Episcopal church in Bethany began in 1785 as a mission of Trinity Church in New Haven. Organized as a legal society in 1799, the new Christ Church parish erected the church building at 526 Amity Road in 1809. Designed by David Hoadley, Christ Church was consecrated in 1810. (more…)
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