The house at 568 South Brooksvale Road in Cheshire was built in 1851 on land long owned by the Brooks family. The first residents of the house, which was known as the Glebe House, were Rev. David March and his wife, Anna Brooks March, whose brother David Brooks had deeded the property to her. Rev. March was pastor of the Cheshire Congregational Church from 1845 to 1848.
Built circa 1847, the Greek Revival house at 19 Fair Street in Guilford was the home of Benjamin Corbin, Jr. (1819-1884). As described in the History and Genealogy of the Descendants of Clement Corbin of Muddy River (Brookline), Mass. and Woodstock, Conn. with Notices of Other Lines of Corbins (1905), compiled by Rev. Harvey M. Lawson:
Benjamin Corbin, Jr., was a well-to-do manufacturing druggist at Guilford, Conn., from which place he was elected to the state legislature in 1858 as an American Republican. He filled numerous political offices in the town of Guilford and also in East Haven and Fair Haven, to which place he removed in 1871. He was a leading member of the Congregational Church at Guilford. He d. Sept 4, 1884, at New Haven, and was buried in the Alderbrook Cemetery, Guilford, Conn., with the other members of his family.
At 244 Hartford Road in Salem is the Parsonage of the Congregational Church of Salem. It is a Greek Revival house built in 1856 with modern solar panels.
The house at 573 Main Street in Somers was built around 1840. It was the home of Judge Solomon Fuller, Jr. (1817-1889). The son of Solomon S. Fuller, who was a soldier in the Revolutionary War, Solomon Fuller grew up in Somers and studied law at Chillicothe, Ohio. He practiced law in Ohio for some years before returning to Somers, where he was both a farmer and an attorney. He was elected Town Clerk and Judge of Probate, serving for four years before moving to Olmstead, Iowa, where he had a saw mill and engaged in lumbering for about two years. Then he returned to Somers, where he was again elected Town Clerk, Treasurer, and Judge of Probate, holding the positions until his death in 1889. He also served in the state General Assembly in 1863. Fuller’s son, Charles S. Fuller (b. 1855), opened the “Elmwood House” and engaged in the hotel and livery business. After his father’s death, he sold the hotel and succeeded his father in being elected to various public offices, including Judge of Probate. In 1922 Charles’s son, Ernest Solomon Fuller (1879-1946), became the third generation of the Fuller family to serve as Judge of Probate. He also served in the Connecticut General Assembly, for twenty years as a trustee of the Meriden School for Boys, and for about forty years he was a member of the Somers Board of Education, usually as its chairman.
The house at 8 North Street in Plymouth Center was built c. 1835 by the Reverend Isaac Warren, a Congregational minister and founder of the Hart Female Seminary, which was located in the Storrs House across the street. A later resident of the house was George Pierpont, who served a term as town clerk in 1874. became a county commissioner in 1877 and was also a federal tax assessor. As related in the History of the Town of Plymouth, Connecticut (1895), compiled by Francis Atwater, Pierpont was the great-great-grandson of Rev. James Pierpont, the second pastor of the First Church in New Haven. He was also related to Rev. Thomas Hooker, first pastor of the First Church in Hartford, Rev. Timothy Collins, first pastor of the Litchfield church, and Caleb Humaston, one of the principal founders of the Northbury Society, now Plymouth.
The best blood of New England thus flowed in Mr. Pierpont’s veins, constituting him a member of that nobility, not of rank, wealth or title, but of intellect, of learning, of piety, of culture, and of character, which has been the foundation of New England’s greatness. The traces of this descent were manifest in Mr. Pierpont. Though denied the literary training which had characterized his earlier ancestry, he was a man of scholarly tastes, especially in the line of historical research, and kept himself well abreast of the general intelligence of the times. He was a man of strict integrity and of lofty honor, and scorned meanness and baseness in all its branches. He held at different times various offices of public trust, such as magistrate, selectman, and clerk of the town, judge of probate, and was a member of the State legislature. In 1861 he was appointed United States assistant assessor and continued to hold that office for eleven years or until it was abolished. In 1877 he was elected by the legislature county commissioner of Litchfield Countv. and re-elected to the same office in 1880. In April, 1840. Mr. Pierpont married Miss Caroline E. Beach, daughter of the late Isaac C. Beach, of Northfield, Conn., who was a devoted wife and helpmate for nearly thirtv-four years. She died January 18, 1874. His second wife was the daughter of the late J. Sherman Titus, of Washington, Conn. George Sherman Pierpont, his son, was born in Plymouth, in 1876, and is now being educated in Dr. Carleton’s family school in Bradford, Mass.
The Greek Revival house at 18 Pine Orchard Road in Branford was built in 1831. It is known as the Miles Blackstone House. This may be the same Miles Blackstone (1806-1875) who is described in Vol. II of A Modern History of New Haven and Eastern New Haven County (1918):
Miles Blackstone was for years an active and honored resident of the town of Branford, where he was prominently connected with agricultural interests. He was born April 1, 1806, [. . . . He] spent the days of his boyhood and youth in Branford and was indebted to the public school system of the locality for the educational opportunities which he enjoyed and which qualified him for life’s practical and responsible duties. He was early trained to farm work and became much interested in that pursuit, which he chose as a life vocation. He concentrated his entire time and attention upon farming and kept in touch with the most progressive methods of planting and developing his crops. Industry, economy and unswerving integrity were among his sterling traits and brought to him a gratifying measure of success as the years passed on. He brought his fields under a high state of cultivation and added to his place many modern improvements. The latest machinery was used to facilitate the work of the fields and his labors were at all times most intelligently directed, so that substantial results followed his work.
[. . .] He passed away in the faith of the Episcopal church, of which he had long been a devoted member. He always attended the church services and contributed liberally to its support. His political endorsement was given to the republican party and he kept well informed on the issues of the day, which he studied closely, so that he was able to support his position by intelligent argument. Of him a contemporary biographer has written: “Mr. Blackstone was a most unassuming and modest gentleman of the old school, with a kindly heart, and was greatly honored and respected in the community in which he lived.”
The Nova Scotia District School was one of the old one-room district school houses of the Town of Watertown. Originally located at the corner of Fern Hill Road and Route 6, it was built in 1853 and served as a school until 1929. The building was disassembled in 1990 and rebuilt in Munson Park at 17 DeForest Street, behind the Gridley Store and the Munson House. The Old Nova Scotia School House reopened in 1993 as a museum, maintained by the Watertown Historical Society and furnished as it would have been in the second half of the nineteenth century.
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