The Federal-style house at 194 North Main Street in Southbury once served as the Congregational Church‘s parsonage. It is believed to have been built by Harry Brown, a drover, in 1805. The house is nearly identical to the Timothy Hinman House, across the street at 185 North Main Street.
In 1794, Giles Pettibone, Jr., son of Col. Giles Pettibone and grandson of Jonathan Pettibone of Simsbury, built a tavern on the Green in Norfolk. After Giles Pettibone died in 1811, according to The Norfolk Village Green (1917), by Frederic S. Dennis,
His son Jonathan Humphrey Pettibone, who died in 1832, succeeded his father as Tavern keeper. This Tavern a little later was kept by John A. Shepard […] This Tavern was known as Shepard’s Tavern and during the stage coach era was a place of great activity. Here the stages stopped to change horses en route between Hartford and Albany and between Winsted and Canaan. This Tavern was in late years rebuilt for a private residence by Mr. Frederick M. Shepard, the son of Capt. John A. Shepard, and was occupied by him and his family as a summer residence. […] An interesting fact connected with the old Tavern is that seven generations of the Shepard family have lived in it.
The Tavern is now covered with aluminum siding, but the central doorway surround is the original wood.
St. John’s Episcopal Church (pdf) was built in 1809 at Warehouse Point, a section of East Windsor which was undergoing economic development at the time. Some of the founders of the church included former members of the First Congregational Church of East Windsor, who had wanted a new church built and been tried and acquitted of the charge of arson after a fire had destroyed their meeting house. St. John’s was constructed on the Green at Warehouse Point, the work being supervised by builder-architect Samuel Belcher. The church was moved to its current location, at 96 Main Street, in 1844. Ten years later, Henry Austin of New Haven was hired to remodel the church in the Gothic style, work which was completed in 1855. While the exterior retains an early nineteenth-century appearance, it sharply contrasts with Austin’s later English Gothic interior.
The house at 96 Union Street in Norwich was built in the Federal style around 1800 for Gilbert Brewster. It was later (around 1884) remodeled in the Georgian Revival style. Around 1910, an elevator was installed which continues to service the house. Read on to learn more about the house’s first resident, Gilbert Brewster… (more…)
The current Town Hall of Killingworth was originally built around 1830 as a house by Dr. Rufus Turner. According to The History of Middlesex County (1884):
Rufus Turner was born at Mansfield, Connecticut, September 1st 1790. With a good preliminary education, he entered the office of Dr. Joseph Palmer, of Ashford, and in 1813-14 attended the first course of lectures given at Yale College. Dr. Turner was licensed by the State Medical Society in 1814, and settled in Killingworth, where he continued in the practice of his profession for thirty-seven years, until his death, after an illness of four days, in November, 1851. As a practitioner he was a careful and conservative, but in cases where promptness was demanded, bold and fearless, faithful in attendance, giving freely of his time and thought to the case in hand, warding off unfavorable complications, and always striving to have the last blow at death. In the protracted fevers of those days he was particularly skillful, and was very frequently called to neighboring towns, in consultation.
His son, Sylvester Wooster Turner, also became a doctor. According to the Proceedings of the Connecticut State Medical Society (1907):
[he] was born in Killingworth, Conn., March 12, 1822. He prepared for college at Hill’s Academy, Essex, Conn., and entered Yale, graduating in 1842.
In 1843 he studied medicine with his father in Killingworth; then he taught in a private school in Norwalk, Conn., was a private tutor in Newbern, Alabama, and for a part of one term taught the district school in Killingworth after the teacher had been driven out by the big boys.
He attended two courses of lectures in the Yale Medical School, graduating in 1846, and at once began to practice with his father in Killingworth.
In 1848 he located in Chester, Conn., remaining until 1858, was in Norwich, Conn., in 1859, then returned to Chester, and was in active practice until failing strength moved him to gradually relinquish his work. A fall, resulting in a permanent disability, compelled him to give up his practice entirely, and from that time he rapidly failed physically until his death in January of this year [1907].
By the mid-twentieth century, the house had become the homestead of Herman and Bertha Heser, whose daughter sold it to the town for use as offices in 1965. The town library was on the second floor (it now has a separate building). (more…)
At 230 Killingworth Road in Higganum in Haddam is a Federal-style house constructed in 1815. It was the home of Selden Skinner, who may have been involved with his father and uncle in operating a gristmill nearby. When he died in 1870, the house passed to his daughter, Frances Halsey.
The Marks-Brownson House in Huntington (part of Shelton) was built between 1820 and 1825 for Hezekiah Marks, a merchant who served in the Connecticut General Assembly in 1828 and 1830. After his death in 1835, at the age of 54, the house was sold to the Bennett family, who sold it in 1866 to Henry Israel Brownson. The house eventually passed to his son, Harry Booth Brownson, who married Gertrude Buckingham in 1904. Making their living as farmers, the couple lived in the house for over sixty years. In 1960, the Brownson Country Club opened on land gifted for one dollar by the Brownsons, who wanted to save it from development. The Shelton Historical Society acquired the Brownson House in 1971, also for a dollar, and moved it from its original location, at the corner of Old Shelton Road and Shelton Avenue, to the corner of Ripton and Cloverdale Roads, where today it is open to the public as part of the Shelton History Center. The house is presented as it would have been during the early years of the marriage of Harry and Gertrude Brownson.
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