The house at 455 Main Street in Middlefield was built in 1805 by Esquire Eli Coe (1758-1835), a prosperous farmer, on the site of his father David Coe‘s former homestead. Eli Coe served as Justice of the Peace and selectman of Middletown. A later owner (1867-1888) was Rev. Spofford D. Jewett. During his ownership the house served as a post office.
In 1796, Daniel Copp (1770-1822) married Sarah (Sally) Allyn and purchased land in Gales Ferry in Ledyard. Soon thereafter he built a house (64 Hurlbutt Road) and ran a merchant shop in a building next door. He sold the property in 1802 and later moved to Florida. He died in St. Augustine during a yellow fever epidemic in January 1822. His Gales Ferry property was bought by Daniel Williams in 1827 and remained in his family for almost a century. It is said that James McNeil Whistler visited the house and admired its large central hearth.
The house at 37 Main Street in North Stonington was built in 1791 by Noah Grant Jr. (1747-1801), a distant relative of Ulysses S. Grant. The rear ell was originally a separate building that was used as a general store by Hosea and Ephraim Wheeler in the late eighteenth century. The house was altered in the first half of the 1860s, when the windows were enlarged and the bay window was added. For a brief time in the early 1960s, the house was owned by the North Stonington Congregational Church and was used as a parish and Sunday school.
Built circa 1800-1810, the Miss H. E. & S. E. Canfield House is located at 524 South Britain Road in Southbury. A Federal-style house, its pedimented entrance porch is a later Greek Revival addition.
The house at 914 Worthington Ridge in Berlin was built around 1790 for Deacon Daniel Galpin (1754-1744), a veteran of the Revolutionary War. In her History of Berlin (1916), Catherine M. North quotes a letter of Mrs. Margaret Dunbar Stuart describing the Deacon:
Deacon Daniel Galpin was brother to Col. Joseph Galpin and lived next door to Parson Goodrich, my grandfather. He was of a more ardent temperament than Col. Galpin. He spoke in prayer meetings, and was a warm abolitionist.
In a wing of his house was a shop where he whittled logs into pumps. Also his daughter Mary utilized this shop for her dame school.
One day there was a sudden noise and my brother, a little boy saying his letters, was greatly pleased to find the Deacon had fallen over his pump log.
At one time Deacon Galpin put up a sign on his pump shop, “Anti-Slavery Books for sale here.”
This subjected him to some persecution and it was torn down by the roughs of the village.
The house was moved to its current address in the late 1840s to make way for the building of the Congregational Church.
The Hayden-Starkey Store, at 48 Main Street in Essex, was only the second brick building in town when it was built in 1809. A warehouse and ships store, or chandlery, it was constructed by Samuel and Ebenezer Hayden, sons of Capt. Uriah Hayden, and was situated between their two residences. Their cousin, Richard Hayden, had recently built his house, Essex’s first brick building, nearby. Timothy Starkey, Jr., the Hayden brothers’ brother-in-law, became their partner in 1810. It is said that the British destroyed rope and took merchandise from this store during their raid on Essex in 1814. Remaining in the Hayden family for many years, the building became a residence in 1856.
The house at 668 Middle Turnpike in Mansfield was built in 1831 by Arnold Wilson. Instead of a glass fanlight above the front door it has one made of wood. The house had many owners over the years, with Joseph Woodward adding an ell in 1836. The house was acquired by Edwin O. Smith in 1923, whose wife named it “Kendall Green” after the house in Washington D.C. owned by her ancestor, Amos Kenall, who was U.S. Postmaster General from 1835 to 1840. E. O. Smith served in the Connecticut General Assembly from 1932 to 1960 and was president of the Connecticut Agricultural College (now UCONN) from from April through September, 1908. Edwin O. Smith High School, next to the UCONN campus in Storrs, is named for him.
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