Isaac W. Jones House (1854)

Various dates can be found for the construction of the house at 227 Ellsworth Street in the Black Rock section of Bridgeport. The City of Bridgeport assessor’s field card gives a date of 1837. The book, History of Black Rock, 1644-1955 (1955), compiled by Dr. Ivan O. Justinius, indicates it was built around 1845. The nomination for the Black Rock Historic District provides a date of 1854, the same year as the Capt. Charles Allen House at 213 Ellsworth Street. The two houses were originally identical, but around 1910 the house at No. 227 was altered by the addition of the gable roof and the octagonal projection between the main block and the side wing on the left.

Whatever the precise date of construction, the house at 227 Ellsworth Street was built by Isaac W. Jones (1806-1863). The house was later owned by Joseph Smith, who married Capt. Allen’s daughter, Sarah Allen. The house passed to their daughter, Viola, wife of James E. Hurlburt, and then to her daughter, Viola Hurlburt Carpenter. She and her husband, Hubert Benton Carpenter, later moved to Fairfield between 1957 and 1964.

Starr Cottage (1885)

The house at 144 South Street in Litchfield was built in 1885 by Almon B. Fuller, a furniture dealer and real estate speculator, who immediately sold the house to F. Ratchford Starr, who also owned the William F. Baldwin House immediately to the south. The two houses were known as the Starr Cottages. An insurance salesman and seasonal resident from Philadelphia, Starr had begun a highly successful dairy farm in Litchfield called Echo Farm in the 1870s. Starr also wrote several books, including Farm Echoes (1886) and The Lamb of God (1888). He sold the business in 1887 and died in 1889, his daughter inheriting the two houses. She willed the houses to Florence Frost, who resided in the Baldwin House until her death in 1923. In 1914, Frost sold the house at 144 South Street to Kate J. Thomas of New York City, who lived in it until her death in 1928. The house was acquired by Melvin Diems in 1949.

Fred Morgan House (1899)

The Victorian Gothic house at 8 North Meadow Road in Windsor was built c. 1899. It was the home of Fred Morgan. Interestingly, in the Windsor Historical Society’s Oral History Collection is an item listed as “Fred Morgan Memoirs: An Interview with Frederick W. Morgan.” According to the description, the interview touched on a wide range of topics, including the North Meadow Road area.

Orlando Gladwin House (1830)

The house 363 Saybrook Road in the Higganum section of Haddam was built in the early 1830s by Orlando Gladwin (1805-1894), shortly after his marriage to Tamzin S. Church in 1829. A trunk made by Tamzin’s father with the initials T.S.C. was recently donated to the Haddam Historical Society. Gladwin was a carpenter who may have built the house himself and later added the many eclectic architectural details it displays today. The house was erected on land owned by his father, James Gladwin. After his father died in 1855, Orlando Gladwin mortgaged the house to his brother, Erasmus, a shipbuilder.

Harry L. Beach House (1885)

Greatly altered since its construction c. 1885, the house at 106 Prospect Place in Bristol is the work of builder-architect Joel T. Case. Now a multi-family home, it is listed in the nomination for the Federal Hill Historic District as the Harry L. Beach House. This is likely Henry L. Beach (1839-1922), who worked for his brother-in-law Edward Ingraham as superintendent at the E. Ingraham Clock Company.