North Guilford Congregational Church Parsonage (1824)

Now a private residence, the house at 145 Ledge Hill Road in Guilford was built in the early 1820s to serve as the parsonage of the North Guilford Congregational Church (an earlier parsonage was auctioned off in 1807). The Federal-era house shares a number of architectural similarities with the church, which was erected just a few years before. The first minister to occupy the parsonage was Rev. Zolva Whitmore (1792-1867), who was active in the Underground Railroad. Future landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903) boarded with Rev. Whitmore when he was seven years old.

Richard Buell House (1785)

The Richard Buell House is located at 17 Waterside Lane in Clinton. Built in 1785, the house displays features of the Federal style. Material used in the construction of the house actually came from part of a raft that hauled lumber to construct the home at 23 Waterside Lane. The raft was guided down the Connecticut River from Essex and then dismantled and the logs brought to the building site by a team of oxen.

Ansel Bristol House (1810)

The house at 44 Cherry Brook Road in Canton was built c. 1810 by Ansel Bristol, a farmer. It was later home to Anson W. Bristol, Jr. A tradition holds that the carpenters who built the house came from working on the Canton Center Congregational Church, which would date the house to c. 1815. The house is also said to have floors that were reused from one of Canton’s earliest churches, dating to the seventeenth century. There is an ell that may have been added from earlier house, built in the middle of the eighteenth century by Isaac Tuller. The house is also said to have been home to the first telephone in Canton. (more…)

Rev. Richard Varick Dey House (1823)

Built about 1823, the Varick Dey House at 39 Meeting House Lane, in the Greenfield Hill section of Fairfield, displays a Dutch Colonial influence combined with elements of the Federal style. The long steep-pitched roof extends to the level of the first floor, which has a recessed veranda. Tradition holds that the house was designed by Lavinia A. Scott, the young bride of Rev. Richard Varick Dey (1801-1837). He was pastor of the Greenfield Hill Congregational Church from 1823 to 1828. As related in Ye Church and Parish of Greenfield: the Story of an Historic Church in an Historic Town, 1725-1913 (1913), by George H. Merwin:

There are very few persons living to-day who can remember Mr. Dey, but he has gone down in history as being a handsome young man of commanding presence and a pastor who at once became a general favorite in the parish. He also became popular outside of his own parish, and multitudes flocked to hear him; in fact it has been said that the old meeting-house was not large enough to accommodate the congregation.

[. . .] Not since the days of Dwight had there been such a flow of eloquence from the Greenfield pulpit, and it is doubtful if any of his successors for many years compared with him as a public speaker. Many of his parishioners who recognized his ability were loath to part with him when the consociation dissolved the pastoral relation in December, 1828. So great was the attendance when he delivered his farewell sermon that the galleries of the old meeting-house were propped to sustain the additional weight.

When Rev. and Mrs. Dey first came to Greenfield they boarded with Captain Nichols, the father of Mrs. Milbank. Later Mr. Dey’s father built for him the house now standing northwest of the present church, and known as the old Samuel Nichols place. Members of the parish assisted in building the house and also furnished much of the lumber. Mrs. Dey drew the plans for the house and planted the shrubbery and trees which still adorn the place.

Rev. Varick Dey was also known to the young P. T. Barnum, and the famous showman relates several stories about the reverend in his autobiography. As related in Funny Stories Told by Phineas T. Barnum (1890):

In my young days the Rev. Richard Varick Dey, of Greenfield, Conn., often came to Bethel to preach or lecture. He was a very able and eloquent, though somewhat eccentric man, popular even with people who did not go to church regularly, but not liked, and perhaps feared, by the too strait-laced; and his lectures and also his sermons were rich in wit as well as pathos. He was very free in saying exactly what he believed and thought, both in and out of the pulpit, and never hesitated to rub against or to knock in the head any particular popular dogma or theological tenet that he himself did not hold. This proclivity now and again brought him into uncomfortably warm water with the church, and he was either suspended or brought to trial for some alleged heresy or breach of ministerial duty. At such times he lectured in different towns, and so supported his family. My grandfather was a Universalist, and “on general principles” was opposed to Presbyterians, though many of them were among his warmest personal friends. He was very much attached to Mr. Dey, and induced him to deliver in Bethel a series of Sunday evening lectures. I remember one of them on “Charity,” which resulted “practically” in a contribution of more than fifty dollars.

Elijah Barber House (1800)

The house at 59 Barbourtown Road in Canton was built in 1800 by Elijah Barber (1748-1820). Elijah’s son, Daniel, raised the house higher and Daniel Hiram, a later owner, added an ell. In the 1830s, when there was a boom in raising silk worms, a silk worm house, or “cocoonery,” was erected on the property. In 1844 a disease struck the mulberry trees in Connecticut that fed the worms and the industry failed. The silk worm house was replaced by a barn, which later became a residence. Roy C. Webster, who had been a “Yankee Peddler” in his youth, bought the Barber House in 1926 and restored it.