The first meetinghouse in North Milford, now Orange, was constructed on the north end of what is now Orange Center Green in 1792. At that time, residents of Orange were still members of the Milford Congregational Church, but a separate Ecclesiastical Society was eventually formed in 1804. The separate Town of Orange was incorporated in 1822. The current Orange Congregational Church, designed by David Hoadley, was built in 1810-1811.
Connecticut’s first Anglican parish was established in Stratford in 1707. Daniel Shelton, an Anglican who had settled in Stratford and later in Repton (later called Ripton and now Huntington, which was later incorporated into the city of Shelton) and been one those who had earlier petitioned for the Stratford parish, petitioned in 1722 for another parish to be established in Repton. Clergy from Stratford began making the trip to Repton to conduct Anglican services in private homes until the Repton parish was founded in 1740. A church building was soon constructed and survived until 1811. In that year, Sidney DeForest, seeking to rid the church’s belfry of pigeons by shooting them, ended up setting the church on fire with tow wadding from his musket. DeForest settled the claims for damages by giving some of his property as payment. The current St. Paul’s Episcopal Church was then built on the site of the earlier church. It was begun in 1812 and completed in 1818 and continued to stand next to what is now called Huntington Center Green. In 1870, a number of changes were made, in the Gothic style, to the interior of the church.
The Town of Orange was incorporated in 1822 and soon new buildings began to be constructed in the vicinity of the new town’s Green. The Stone-Otis House was one such structure, built around 1830 for Dennis Stone. A prominent citizen, Stone owned the town’s second general store, located in his home. Around 1840, he added a large front display window to the house for the store. Stone and his family later moved to Kansas. The house, which is transitional between the Federal and Greek Revival styles, was sold Phoebe and Charles Otis, a tool and dye maker, in 1887. The family sold the house to the town in 1966. The restored house is now a museum and the headquarters of the Orange Historical Society.
The Colonel Avery Morgan House, at 219 South Main Street in Colchester, was built around 1824. Col. Morgan, born in 1781, was originally from Groton. He was a carpenter, merchant and farmer, who also served in the War of 1812 in the defense of New London. In 1802, he married Jerusha Gardner. Their first two children were born in Groton (they also lived for a time in Bozrah) and the other five children were born in Colchester, which they moved to in 1807. They later moved to Hartford, where Col. Morgan died in 1860 and his widow in 1861. The Colonel Avery Morgan House in Colchester is now a branch of Liberty Bank.
The Late Georgian, or Federal style, Peters House, at 150 East Street in Hebron, consists of two sections. The vernacular rear ell was built in the mid-eighteenth century and was home to enslaved African-American residents Caesar and Lowis Peters. They were owned by loyalist Rev. Samuel Peters, who fled Hebron in 1774 to live in England. Cesar was left to tend to the property, which was later seized by the State of Connecticut. After the Revolutionary War, Rev. Peters, still in England, sold off his American assets, Cesar and his wife and children being sold to David Prior of South Carolina. In 1787, Prior and his men came to take the family, who were then rescued by a group of Hebron men, who used the pretext that Cesar owed money to a local tailor as a way to rescue him and his family. In 1789, Cesar and his family were freed by the Connecticut General Assembly and, the following year, Cesar Peters sued David Prior for damages, although he later dropped the suit. The front part of the house was probably built by Jonathan Peters, Rev. Peter’s brother, around 1795. The house, which remained a single family home until 1967, was acquired by the Town of Hebron in 2004. The surrounding land became a recreational facility, but the house was in need of restoration. In recent years there were debates about the future of the house, which was recently added to the Connecticut Freedom Trail. Local residents and descendants of Lois and Cesar Peters urged that the building be restored as a historic site. The town has since received a $200,000 grant from the state for restorations and a film about Cesar and Lowis Peters, Testimonies of a Quiet New England Town, has recently been released.
Isaac Buck built the house at 14 Maple Street in Chester by 1755 on land he had acquired in 1750. He divided the house and barn with his son Justus. Justus’ son, William Buck, sold the house in 1798. Later, in the nineteenth century, the house was owned by Joshua L’Hommedieu. He settled in Chester in 1812 and, with his brother Ezra, became an early manufacturer in town. He also represented Chester in the state General Assembly. At some point the colonial-era Isaac Buck House acquired Federal and Greek Revival-style exterior ornamentation.
The Windham Inn is a notable landmark in Windham Center, at the intersection of Scotland Road and Windham Center Road, near Windham Green. Known as the Windham House prior to 1890, the building was constructed in 1783 and was originally three stories. It began to buckle around 1850 and was then reduced to two stories. The three dormer windows were added around the same time. Also added at some point was a front porch, later removed. The Inn, which is believed to be haunted, was converted into apartments in the mid-twentieth century. The inn sign from the 1890s is in the collection of the Connecticut Historical Society.
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