49 Barnes Hill Road, Burlington (1803)

The house at 49 Barnes Hill Road in Burlington is currently for sale. One of the present owners of the house has provided me the results of some of her research into the history of the property. She writes that

The property was purchased/settled we believe in 1803 (previous owners found a dated cornerstone in the cellar) when Burlington was a part of Bristol (Burlington was incorporated in 1806). The original owners were Amzi [Barnes (1784-1865)] and Sophoronia [Mills] Barnes. We think they built the original structure. They had 10 children, many of whom stayed in the area. Many also died in childhood and are buried in a local Burlington cemetery.

The house has clearly been expanded over time and has been thoroughly renovated for modern living inside. The current main structure we believe dates back to the 1880s and shows up on the Burlington land records then. Our current family room originally served as the “birthing barn” for the new calves on the farm and was later finished as a family room and connected to the main house in the 20th century via a connecting “mud room”.

One of Amzi and Sophronia‘s sons was Isaac Barnes (1830-1909), a meat merchant and lumber dealer who was a member of Connecticut state house of representatives from Burlington in 1867. Another son was Cromwell Barnes, who was the father of Adna North Barnes. Adna had five children with his second wife, Anna Delight Upson Barnes, who are pictured on page 81 of the Images of America volume on Burlington. One of the children was Louis Barnes.

One descendant who lived in the home, Louis Barnes, [was] born during the 1888 blizzard. He was noted as a prize cattle breeder in CT. I believe he is credited with bringing some of the first Swiss cows to America.

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Lemuel Camp Tavern (1806)

Lemuel Camp built his house on Main Street in Durham in 1806 and it was soon opened as a tavern. Lemuel Camp died in 1843 and his widow, Martha Pickett Camp, in 1860. The house was then divided between their surviving children, Edward Pickett Camp of New Haven and his unmarried sister, Sophronia Camp, but neither lived in the house. Sallie B. Strong bought the property near the turn of the century and rented rooms to tenants. Edward P. Camp’s daughter, Hattie Camp, married the watercolor painter Wedworth Wadsworth (1846-1927) and they rented rented the house as a summer residence. The house has passed through other owners over the years and was restored in 1978.

9 South Canterbury Road, Canterbury (1820)

The Federal-style house at 9 South Canterbury Road was built c.1820 and has a porch on the front and side that was added later. In the 1850s, the house was owned by Marvin H. Sanger, a merchant, banker and politician. According to the Illustrated Popular Biography of Connecticut (1891):

Marvin Hutchins Sanger was born in Brooklyn, in Windham county, April 12, 1827. In his infancy his parents removed to Canterbury, where he was educated in the public schools, and at Bacon Academy in Colchester, and was kept at home assisting his father upon the farm until he reached the age of eighteen. Then followed two years of experience in a country store as clerk, which served as a preparation for the business of general merchandizing which he followed in Canterbury for twenty years, from 1849 to 1869 […] November 14, 1855, he was married to Miss Mary J. Bacon, daughter of the late Benjamin Bacon of Plainfield. They have had two children, both daughters. Mr. Sanger has been a lifelong democrat […] He has long been a justice of the peace and has thus been much occupied in the trial of criminal cases. He was elected town clerk and treasurer in 1852, and has been re-elected ever since with the exception of two years. He has been judge of probate for about a quarter of a century, and was postmaster at Canterbury for fifteen years under various presidential administrations. He has been on the board of directors of the Brooklyn Savings Bank, and now for several years has been its president. He represented Canterbury in the state legislature in 1857, 1860, 1882, 1887, and 1889; was secretary of state for four successive years, from 1873 to 1877 and was democratic candidate for state treasurer in the autumn of 1890, receiving an apparent majority of all the votes cast, but failing to receive official recognition from the house of representatives at its session the following January, owing to a disagreement between the two branches of the legislature as to the accuracy or validity of the returns, –as was the case with all the candidates on the democratic state ticket, with the exception of the comptroller.

In the 1920s, the barn to the rear of the house was used by Hiram Hawes as a flyfishing-rod factory.

Skinner-Hammond House (1790)

At 765 Hartford Turnpike in Vernon Center is the impressive Federal-style Skinner-Hammond House, built around 1786-1790 by Reuben Skinner. It may have been the work of master builder Elisha Scott or one of his apprentices. Scott was born in Tolland and later lived in Poultney, Vermont. At one time, the house served as a tavern and public meeting place called Skinner’s Inn. The house was later owned by the Hammond family, who were pioneers establishing nearby Rockville‘s woolen industry in the mid-nineteenth century. Alterations were made to the house c.1830 and c.1890.

John Warburton House (1803)

The first house to built in what would become the manufacturing village of Talcottville in Vernon was the brick Federal-style house of John Warburton, constructed in 1803. Warburton was a skilled mechanic who emigrated from England in 1792. He introduced mechanized cotton spinning to Connecticut in 1795, creating a water-powered cotton mill while he was working for the Pitkin family of East Hartford. In 1802, he left the Pitkins and, with his partner Daniel Fuller, built the first cotton-spinning mill on the Tankerhoosen River in Vernon (then called North Bolton). The Warburton House still stands at 19 Main Street in Talcottville, next to the old dam and mill pond. The house has notable brick fringe work found only on its north-facing corner. A second and grander Warburton House, known as the “Four Chimney House,” once stood nearby, but no longer survives.

Nellie E. McKnight Museum (1812)

The Nellie E. McKnight Museum is a historic house owned by the Ellington Historical Society. Located at 70 Main Street, the brick Federal house was built in 1812 for Charles Sexton, a farmer and store owner. Howard McKnight, the father of Nellie E. McKnight, bought the house in 1922. Nellie McKnight had been born on her father’s farm in Ellington in 1894. She graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 1917 and taught school until 1929, when she return to Ellington and became the librarian of the Hall Memorial Library, a position she held until her retirement in 1967. She continued to live in the Sexton/McKnight house until her death in 1981, when the house and its contents were bequeathed to the Historical Society to become a museum.