William A. Parmalee House (1840)

William A. Parmalee House

One of Durham‘s best examples of the Greek Revival style is the house at 313 Main Street (which was 138 Main Street before the numbers were changed a few years ago). The house was built around 1840 on land acquired the year before by Phineas Parmalee, a shoemaker, whose own house and shop were across the street. He sold the house for $1200 to his son, William A. Parmalee, in 1842. William A. Parmalee, a manufacturer of shoes like his father, had married Mary J. Camp in 1840. He also served as Town Clerk and as a representative to the General Assembly.

First Congregational Church of Watertown (1839)

First Congregational Church of Watertown

The Ecclesiastical Society of Westbury, now Watertown, was established in 1739 and the first Congregational meeting house was built in 1741 on a corner of the Old Watertown Cemetery at French and Main Streets. The second meeting house was constructed in 1772 where the Town Hall of Watertown now stands. The third and current building of the First Congregational Church of Watertown was erected in 1839 on a hill overlooking the town’s Public Green. The building was designed and erected by master builder Steven Baldwin, whose contract called for a structure that would match the size and style of the Plymouth Congregational Church, built the year before. (more…)

Plymouth Congregational Church (1838)

Plymouth Congregational Church

The Ecclesiastical Society of the section of Waterbury called Northbury (now Plymouth) was organized in 1739. The Society originally met in a building on the parish’s west side (now Thomaston). When plans were soon made to construct a meeting house on the east side, a number of west side settlers broke from the Congregational Society to form an Episcopal Society. (Plymouth was incorporated as a town in 1795 and Thomaston in 1875). As related in Francis Atwater’s History of the town of Plymouth, Connecticut (1895):

The Congregational society had its first home on the hill, and there it has always been, nor would an Episcopal society have been formed in Thomaston then if the church had been built here. The conflict was primarily of locality and only secondarily of ecclesiastical order.

The first meeting house (built c. 1747) was replaced by a second, built in 1792. The current Plymouth Congregational Church, which faces Plymouth Green, was built in 1838. It has wooden clockworks built by Eli Terry and donated by him to the church. (more…)

Timothy Wadsworth House (1829)

Timothy Wadsworth House

The will of Eliphalet Wadsworth, who died in 1823, deeded his land in Farmington to his relative Timothy Wadsworth, but also gave life use of the property to his widow Mary. In 1829, Timothy Wadsworth replaced the original eighteenth-century (1795?) house with a new Greek Revival one. Here he lived with his wife Mary until he died in 1841. She continued to reside there until she passed away in 1862. Their children sold the property in 1865. According to tradition, the house was a station on the Underground Railroad. In helping fugitive slaves, the Wadsworth’s made use of the passenger boats on the Farmington Canal, which ran through their property behind their house. The Timothy Wadsworth House, which is located at 340 Main Street in Farmington, is now used for offices, having been renovated and expanded for that purpose, construction being completed in 2008.

Atlantic Duck Company Mill House (1855)

Atlantic Duck Co. Mill House

Cotton duck (also called canvas) is a type of heavy cotton fabric. The Atlantic Mill, originally called the Atlantic Duck Company, was first leased in Moodus (in East Haddam) in 1852. Destroyed by fire in 1854, the mill was rebuilt and operational again by 1857. Closed during the Civil War, the mill later reopened and continued in operation until 1894. In 1898 it began operating as a twine and textile mill until it burned down in 1939. Surviving today in Moodus is the “Atlantic Duck Co. Mill House,” built c. 1855.

Dr. Asaph Bissell House (1840)

Dr. Asaph Bissell House

The house at 52 South Main Street in Suffield was built c. 1840 for Dr. Asaph Bissell (1791-1850). Dr. Bissell was a member of Yale Medical School’s second graduating class (1815). A pair of leather saddlebags belonging to Dr. Bissell were donated to Yale’s Medical Historical Library in 1996 by the doctor’s great-great-grandson. Over the years, two other doctors have lived in the Bissell House.