Capt. Ira Shailer constructed his house on Bridge Road in Haddam around 1815, two years after acquiring the property. He had married Jerusha Arnold in 1808 and the couple would have a family of ten surviving children. Their son, Alexander Shailer, who was born in the house in 1827, served as a general in the Civil War. The Shailer family eventually moved to New York in 1835 and the house was purchased by Benoni Southworth, a ship captain who had married Ira Shailer’s cousin, Mary Ann Shailer.
The Stiles-Stoddard House in Seymour was built on the site of an earlier home, constructed by the son of a Pequot sachem, named Joseph Mauwehu, who was also known as “Chuse.” Joseph and his followers lived in an area of land known as Indian Hill, which was north of the Naugatuck River near the Great Falls. From around 1740, the Indians lived peacefully with the white settlers who were moving into the area, but eventually the newcomers numbers grew to an extent that made it difficult for the Indians to follow their traditional way of life. After living more than four decades in the area, Joseph then left with his tribesmen and moved to Kent, where their was a larger Indian reservation. Seymour was first known as Chusetown, named in honor of Chief Joseph. In 1795, Nathan Stiles built his house on the site where Joseph had lived, at a fork in the road, where today Pearl Street splits off from South Main Street. After Stiles’ death in 1804, his widow, Phebe Dayton Stiles, lived in the house and owned land on Indian Hill. Over the years, many people sought to buy her land, and to each of them she promised to sell it eventually, but these promises were so often repeated without her selling to anyone, that Indian Hill came to be known as the “Promised Land.” The house was later received by Dr. Thomas Stoddard as a gift from his father. In 1898, when C.H. Lounsbury owned the house, he raised and repaired the building, converting it into a two-family home.
Obadiah Spencer, an Essex merchant, built a house on Pratt Street in 1826. Later in financial trouble, he sold the house in 1831 to ship carpenter Richard Hill. Owned in the 1840s by a group of Baptists who were considering making it a church rectory, the house was later a rental property. Much expanded over the years, it has more recently been made into condominiums. Note: This post was written on 09/02/2011 and backdated so that there would be a regular post for 04/01/2009 as well as an April Fool’s Post.
New London County Courthouse was built in 1784 on Huntington Street at the head of State Street in New London. It was designed by the Lebanon builder, Isaac Fitch, and at first the building served as both town hall and courthouse. Originally built closer to State Street, the courthouse was moved back when Huntington Street was widened in 1839. Dudley St. Clair Donnelly designed a rear addition, built in 1909, and a modern addition by Hirsch and Persch was constructed in 1982. The New London Courthouse is one of America’s oldest courthouses still in use.
Daniel Deshon was a New London-based whaling captain and merchant who built a house for himself and his wife Fanny on Williams Street in New London in 1829. Mrs. Deshon died in 1833 and the house was put up for sale, being purchased in 1851 by Lyman Allyn, who was also a successful whaler. The house remained in the Allyn family until 1926, when Harriet Upson Allyn, Lyman’s last surviving child, died. Harriet Allyn had provided for the construction of the adjacent Lyman Allyn Art Museum, which was built in 1932. The Deshon-Allyn House was also opened to the public as part of the museum campus. The house was refurbished in 1956, a major restoration was undertaken in 1996, and another renovation in 2008.
Rev. Simon Shailer became minister of Haddam’s Baptist Church in 1822. In 1827, he built a house on Saybrook Road in Shailerville adjacent to a house he had constructed for his son that same year. The houses are very similar in their Federal style design, although the Simon Shailer House has a Victorian-era balustraded porch with a hipped roof. Another son of Simon Shailer, Nathan Emery Shailer, also became a Baptist minister. After Rev. Simon Shailer died in 1864, his widow and daughter lived there and it is now owned by a descendant.
Around 1827 in the Shailerville section of Haddam, where many homes were built by the close-knit Shailer family, Russell Shailer built a Federal style home after his marriage to Huldah B. Arnold. At first, his father, Rev. Simon Shailer, continued to own the land on which the house was built and built a home for himself at the same time next door. When Simon, a Baptist minister, died in 1864, Russell, who was a deacon in the church, received full title to the property. Behind the house was the Shailer and Knowles factory, where stamped and pressed metal products were manufactured from the 1870s to 1914. The houses of both father and son continue to be owned by a descendant of Russell Shailer.
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