The Jesse Hurd House (1812)

The Jesse Hurd House, built of stone with bold Federal detailing, is the most impressive of the homes built in Middle Haddam (in East Hampton) during its period as a prosperous shipbuilding center. Jesse Hurd (1765-1831) was a prosperous shipbuilder and merchant who played a dominant role in the economic development of Middle Haddam. He built many ships for his partners, the brothers, George and Nathaniel Griswold, who ran the largest merchant shipping house in New York. Hurd owned shares in his vessels and cargoes, building cheaply in Middle Haddam and selling his shares in New York. In 1828, he patented new ship hoisting machinery which he had invented himself. This machinery more easily enabled the scraping and repairing of hulls. Hurd also joined the Griswolds in establishing the New York Screw Dock Company, a dry-dock facility on the East River which utilized the new technology. His impressive house in Middle Haddam, built around 1812, was most likely designed by a master architect/builder, whose name is currently not known. Shipbuilding in Middle Haddam began to decline after Hurd’s death in 1831.

Benjamin Trumbull House (1790)

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The Benjamin Trumbull House in Colchester was built sometime between 1790 and 1801. According to Biographical Sketches of the Graduates of Yale College with Annals of the College History, Vol. IV (1907), by Franklin Bowditch Dexter:

Benjamin Trumbull, the only son of the Rev. Dr. Benjamin Trumbull (Yale 1759) who survived infancy, was born in North Haven, Connecticut, on September 24, 1769. He remained in New Haven for two years after graduation, filling the office of College Butler, and pursuing the study of law. On his admission to the bar he returned to the vicinity of the birthplace of his parents, and settled in Colchester, Connecticut, where he had a long career of usefulness. He was sent to the Legislature as a Representative eleven times between 1807 and 1831, and for about twenty years (1818-38) was Judge of the Probate Districts of East Haddam and Colchester.

Benjamin Trumbull’s son, Lyman Trumbull, was born and raised in the house. Lyman Trumbull later became a senator from Illinois and a founder of the Republican Party and an associate of Abraham Lincoln. He helped author the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ending slavery. The house is on the Connecticut Freedom Trail.

Ira Lee House (1806)

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Located at 1 Blacksmith Hill Road in Middle Haddam in East Hampton, the Ira Lee House is a Federal-style home built in 1806. Lee was described, in The History of Middlesex County (1884), as “a prominent citizen of Middle Haddam, and at one time a justice of the peace and judge of Probate.” His house reflects a common rural variety of the Federal style, with the structure following a traditional center-chimney colonial design, the Federal details being restricted to the elaborate doorway. The house has its original six-paneled door.

The Simon Hazelton House (1785)

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At the intersection of Walkley, Hayden Hill, and Saybrook Roads in Haddam is a Georgian-style house, originally built in 1785, but with significant Victorian era alterations. These include a central gable and two dormer windows on the front facade, a porch wrapping around three sides of the house, and enlarged windows. The house was built by Simon Hazelton, Sr., who had been a captain in the Revolutionary War. In the twentieth century, the house was converted to become a rest home known as the Walkley Hill Home.

The William Jillson House (1826)

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In 1826, Asa Jillson and his brother, Seth, from Rhode Island, arrived in the Borough of Willimantic in the Town of Windham, where they became industrial pioneers, setting up mills and building a stone house, built of gneiss granite quarried from the Willimantic River. Asa’s son, “Colonel” William Lawrence Jillson, had arrived with his father and eventually became the agent for his father and uncle’s textile manufacturing firm, the A. & S. Jillson Company. William L. Jillson worked with the machinist Ames Burr Palmer to invent the Jillson and Palmer cotton opener, which came to be used throughout the country. Jillson founded other textile factories and, when he died in 1861, control of his companies passed to his son, William Curtis Jillson, who became one of Willimantic’s most prominent citizens. By the 1970s, the stone Jillson House had fallen into disrepair. It was restored and became the home of the Windham Historical Society.

Charles Ives Birthplace (1780)

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Historic Buildings of Connecticut’s 850th building is the Charles Ives Birthplace in Danbury. Ives, born in 1874, was an unconventional composer who combined traditional and revolutionary elements. The original timber frame of his childhood home was built in 1780 by Thomas Tucker, but this building burned in the 1820s. The remains of the structure were purchased by Isaac Ives and rebuilt as a Federal-style house. Charles Edward Ives‘ father George Edward Ives, the youngest band master in the Union Army during the Civil War, was a music teacher who taught his son to embrace unusual combinations of sounds. In 1894, the younger Ives left Danbury to attend Yale. He would go on to form a very successful insurance company, while also composing modernist musical works which would not be fully appreciated by the public until later in the twentieth century. Ives married Harmony Twitchell, the daughter of Mark Twain’s friend, Rev. Joseph Twitchell. The house where Charles Ives had been born was moved from its first location, on Main Street, to Chapel Place in 1923 and again to Mountainville Avenue in 1966. It was later restored by the Danbury Museum and opened to the public in 1992.