Former North Stonington Post Office/Store (1816)

60 Main St., North Stonington

The late Federal/Early Greek Revival building at 60 Main Street in North Stonington was built between 1816 and 1828. Originally a residence, it was being used as a post office and store by the 1860s. The post office had previously been located in the nearby Holmes Block. Hillard’s general store occupied the building at 60 Main Street in the early twentieth century. The Town Clerk’s office was located here as well until 1904. The post office continued in this building until 1986. The building was then home to the law office of William H. Hescock, Esq.

David R. Sloper House (1760)

Sloper House

Robert Sloper of Branford moved his family to a farm in Southington in 1730. His son, Ambrose Sloper (1734-1822), who lived to the age of 89, built a house there in 1760. Having outlived his son, also named Ambrose, who died in 1810, Sloper left the farm to his grandson, David Root Sloper (1801-1887), who was a farmer and cement manufacturer. In 1831 he married Cornelia Bristol, who died in 1837 at the age of 24. His second wife was Eliza Augusta Woodruff. The farm was next operated by David R. Sloper’s daughter, Cornelia Sloper Neal (1851-1948), and her husband Lloyd Neal (1852-1878), and after Mr. Neal’s early death by William Orr (1858-1906), who was married to Cornelia’s sister Julia (1855-1922). After 1905, members of the Pocock family used the farm, which was willed by Cornelia Sloper Neal to the Southington-Cheshire Community YMCA in 1949. The farm has since developed into the YMCA Camp Sloper Outdoor Center (1000 East Street in Southington).

YMCA sources state that the Sloper house was built by Ambrose Sloper in 1760. Heman R. Timlow states, in his Ecclesiastical and Other Sketches of Southington, Conn. (1875), that David R. Sloper “owns and occupies the old homestead of his father and grandfather, on East street. Several years since he built himself a new house, which occupies the same location as the old one.” The house’s Greek Revival style also indicates a later date of construction.

Second Baptist Church, Suffield (1840)

Second Baptist Church

The Second Baptist Church of Suffield was established in 1805 by members of the First Baptist Church. The original wooden church was replaced by a brick Greek Revival edifice in 1840, located at 100 North Main Street. The church was designed by local architect Henry Sykes, who had trained under Chauncey Shepherd of Springfield and Ithiel Town of New Haven. Additions were made to the church in 1953 and 1959.

Flanders Baptist and Community Church (1843)

Flanders Baptist and Community Church

The Baptist Church in Lyme was established in 1752 and the first meeting house was built in 1754 on Meetinghouse Hill. By the later eighteenth century, membership in the church had grown to point that Baptists outnumbered Congregationalists in the parish. Repairs were made to the meeting house in 1788 and in 1804 the building was plastered for the first time. Originally known as the Lyme Baptist Church, the name was changed around 1810 to the “First Baptist Church of Lyme” after a second Baptist Church was formed in town. In 1839, when the area containing the church became part of the new town of East Lyme, the church became the First Baptist Church of East Lyme. A separate Baptist church in Niantic (part of East Lyme) was formed in 1842. By that time, demographic changes had resulted in the meeting house no longer being as centrally located as it had once been. With new churches established in Niantic and Old Lyme, the First Baptist Church moved to the village of Flanders in East Lyme, completing enough of the new meeting house to make the transfer from Meetinghouse Hill to Flanders in the spring of 1843. The old meeting house was taken down and sold for lumber to help pay for construction of the new building. A parsonage was built next door in 1879. The church has been known as the Flanders Baptist and Community Church since 1929.

Anson Bray House (1835)

Anson Bray House

South Britain is a village in Southbury. At 636 South Britain Road is a house that once served as the village post office. As related in South Britain Sketches and Records (1898) by W.C. Sharpe:

Anson Bray was a blacksmith by trade but kept a hotel in South Britain for many years, and for forty years was postmaster.

He first married Betsey Plant of Rochester, NY. His second wife was Ellen Pierce, of South Britain.

Among the pillars of those days was Anson Bray, from time immemorial the village postmaster. His house, now occupied by Mr-and Mrs. James Adams, was probably more widely known and more frequently visited than any other in the village.

In addition,

Judson Bray, son of Stephen B. and Hannah Bray, removed to Bridgeport, but later returned to South Britain and with his brother Anson started the saddletree business in the old shop just back of Anson Bray’s house, and continued the business there for some years.

The Anson Bray House was built in 1835. It has a recessed wing that was built earlier.

Mark F. Spelman House (1845)

211 Washington St., Forestville, Bristol

The house at 211 Washington Street in Forestville in Bristol was built in 1845. It later became the home of Mark F. Spelman, a farmer who purchased the farm on Washington Street, at the head of what is now Central Street, in 1873. The family had earlier lived in Granville, Massachusetts. Spellman’s daughter, Lila Adah Spelman (1866-1945), was born in Granville. She completed her elementary school education in Forestville, but then, because there was no high school in Bristol, she commuted daily by train from Forestville to the Hartford Public High School. She graduated in 1885, taught school in Southington and married William H. Rowe in 1889.