When Sereno H. Scranton of Madison married Susan Roxanna Doud in 1833, his father, Jonathan Scranton, presented the couple with a new Greek Revival home on the Boston Post Road. Sereno Scranton was a prominent citizen of Madison, who owned many merchant ships and served as a state representative and senator. He was also president of the Shoreline Railroad. Today, the house is the Scranton Seahorse Inn.
The First Congregational Church in Guilford dates back to 1639, when Rev. Henry Whitfield and his followers sailed from England to New Haven and settled the town of Guilford, then part of New Haven Colony. They had drawn up a covenant on shipboard during their journey to America. The town’s first meeting house, a small stone building with a thatched roof, was soon built on Guilford Green, replaced in 1713 by a new church, said to have been the first in Connecticut to have a steeple clock and bell. In the early nineteenth century there was a movement to clear the Green of buildings. The current church was then built in 1830, on a site overlooking the Green. The Hurricane of 1938 toppled the original steeple, which was rebuilt the following year.
Capt. John Appleman was a Mystic sea captain who commanded the Naptune and the Hero. His Greek Revival home was built in 1837 and is on Gravel Street in Mystic. The original pedimented entryway to the house was destroyed in the Hurricane of 1938. In 1958, the house was purchased by Capt. Edward L. Beach. He commanded the nuclear submarine, USS Triton, in 1960, when it became the first vessel to execute a submerged circumnavigation of the Earth. Capt. Beach was also a bestselling author of the World War II submarine novel, Run Silent Run Deep (1955).
Today we look at the congregational churches in two neighboring towns, Enfield and Longmeadow, Massachusetts (the latter over at Historic Buildings of Massachusetts, which has had a number of additions in recent days from towns such has Marlborough, Sudbury, Wayland, Weston, Waltham and Lexington, as well as Longmeadow). The church in Enfield was first authorized in 1680, when the earliest settlers from Salem, Massachusetts, set up home sites in the town. The first church building was constructed in 1683, although the congregation’s first minister was not hired until 1699. The second church building was constructed in 1708 and it was here, in July 1741, that Jonathan Edwards delivered his famous sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” That church no longer exists, but a stone with a plaque marks its former location. The third Enfield meetinghouse was built in 1775, and is still standing; it later served as a town hall and is now a museum. When the current church was built, in 1849, the old building was moved across the street, rotated 180 degrees and had columns added to match the Greek Revival style of the new building.
Franklin Goodspeed was a druggist in Portland. He and his wife, Julia Patten Goodspeed, lived in an 1837 Greek Revival house on Main Street. (more…)
Adjacent to the George Greenman House, on Greenmanville Avenue in Mystic, is an earlier house, possibly built around 1820, which was acquired by the Greenman brothers in 1837. The brothers resided in the house as they set up the George Greenman & Co. shipyard, eventually moving to the Greenman House, when it was built in 1839. Around 1849, the older house was raised an additional floor and a new two-story ell was added. For a half-century, it became a boarding house for workers at the shipyard and was run by the ship joiner David Langworthy and his wife, Fanny. From 1931 to 1974, the house was owned by the Allyn family. It is now owned by Mystic Seaport.
George Greenman was the eldest of three brothers who founded the shipyard in Mystic known as George Greenman & Co. His house on Greenmanville Avenue was built in 1839 and was enlarged and further ornamented later in the nineteenth century. Greenman’s brothers initially resided in the house with him, until they built their own homes nearby on Greenmanville Avenue. The Greenman home is reported to have been a stop on the Underground Railroad. The Mystic Seaport living history museum acquired the house from George Greenman‘s great-granddaughter in 1970. The house has a Historic Structures Report.
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