Next to the George Grannis House on Church Street in Waterbury, is the the Enoch Hibbard House, built in 1864, which displays features of the Stick style. Enoch Hibbard was a merchant, tailor and furniture maker. The house was later owned by the Burrall family and has been a law office since 1955.
The Queen Anne style house at 96 Main Street in Farmington was built in 1875 as the Parsonage of the First Congregational Church. The stone store, built by Maj. Timothy Cowles, originally occupied the site, but was destroyed by fire on July 21, 1864. William Gay, a merchant who owned several parcels of real estate in Farmington, bought the lot in 1871 and sold it to the First Ecclesiastical Society.
This Thanksgiving we focus on a house that is now a family museum. The Hicks-Stearns Family Museum, established in 1980, is a Victorian era home, located on Tolland Green. The earliest parts of the house date to the eighteenth century, sometime before 1788, when then owner Benoni Shepard established a tavern in the home known as Shepard’s Tavern at the Sign of the Yellow Ball. Shepard was also a deacon of the Congregational Church and served as postmaster, with a post office in his home, from 1795 to 1807. The house was occupied by the Hicks family from 1845 into the the 1970s. The family enlarged and embellished the house with many Victorian-era architectural features in the 1870s and 1880s. Charles R. Hicks was a leading merchant in Providence and New York, who retired to Tolland. He married Maria Amelia Stearns Their son, Ratcliffe Hicks, was president of the Canfield Rubber Works of Bridgeport and a member of the state legislature. The Ratcliffe Hicks School of Agriculture at UCONN is also named for him.
Dating to about 1880, the Haddam Neck Congregational Church Parsonage on Schoolhouse Road in Haddam Neck may have been moved from another location to become the parsonage around 1882. The Church has rented the house since 1941.
In 1898, Edward and Abbie Buck sold a lot on Hartford Avenue in Wethersfield to Albert Morgan and his house was built soon afterward (around 1900). I don’t know if this is the Albert Morgan associated with the Albert Morgan Archeological Society. The house passed through other owners and was acquired by Charles H. Robbins in 1923. His, daughter Ethel, resided there until 1972, when she moved to Armsmear in Hartford. An “M” for Morgan on the house’s chimney support was inadvertently placed upside down when the chimney was rebuilt in 1973.
Deep River’s town library was formed in 1900 and was at first located in a room in the Town Hall. Although plans had been made at various times to construct a library building, by the 1930s this had still not been done. Eventually, the 1881 home of Richard Spencer, who had been a President of the Deep River National Bank and a state senator, was purchased by the Library Association and donated to the town as a gift. The Queen Anne/Stick Style House, located on the corner of Main and Village Streets, was renovated and modified to become a library, under the direction of Harvey J. Brooks. The Deep River Public Library opened in 1933, with a new addition being constructed in 1995.
The Kelo House, also known as the Little Pink House, was built in 1890 in a residential area of New London by John Bishop, a prominent local carpenter. It had various owners after Carpenter’s death in 1893 and few years later was moved to the Fort Trumbull neighborhood of New London. In the late 1980s, the Little Pink House and the house next to it were restored by the preservationist, Avner Gregory. On the market for many years, the house was not occupied until Susette Kelo moved in in 1997. When the City of New London sought to use the right of eminent domain to acquire the neighborhood for private development (which would bring in more tax money) it started a legal battle that went all the way to the Supreme Court in 2005. Although Kelo lost in Kelo vs. City of New London, the public reaction to the abuse of eminent domain laws led to citizen activism and new reform legislation in favor of property owners. Three years after the decision, in 2008, the house was rededicated on a new site on Franklin Street in New London. The house had been reacquired and moved by Avner Gregory and stands as a monument, with an explanatory plaque out front, to the battle over eminent domain. A new book about the case, Little Pink House: A True Story of Defiance and Courage, by Jeff Benedict, has just been published.
You must be logged in to post a comment.