Amos C. Tift House (1851)

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Amos C. Tift, who died at Mystic. Connecticut, at the age of seventy-six in 1883, was a merchant by occupation and had exceptional business capacity. He was quite well known in the South, especially at Key West, Florida.

So writes Lucian Lamar Knight in A Standard History of Georgia and Georgians, Vol. 6 (1917). Amos Chapman Tift of Mystic is mentioned in a book about Georgia because his son, Henry Harding Tift, was the founder of Tifton, in Tift County, Georgia. The county, created in 1905, was named for Nelson Tift, a brother of Amos, who had settled in Georgia, become a successful entrepreneur and politician, and founded the city of Albany in 1835. Henry H. Tift joined his uncle‘s company and later founded Tifton when he opened a sawmill there in 1872. He was involved in many business ventures and was a philanthropist dedicated to promoting education. As the book quoted above explains:

He was a man who, realizing the great wealth of natural resources not only in timber but in agricultural lines, established sawmills, built railroads, caused the establishment of agricultural experiment stations, colonized the country with sturdy and thrifty farmers, and lent his personal agency and his material resources to the steady development of this portion of the state.

The Amos C. Tift House, which was the childhod home of Henry Harding Tift, was built around 1851 on High Street in Mystic. Henry H. Tift’s later house in Tifton, built in 1887, is part of the Georgia Agrirama, an agricultural and historical museum village.

E.G. Robbins House (1790)

The E.G. Robbins House, on Main Street in Wethersfield, was originally a gambrel-roofed structure, built by Elijah Wright around 1790. Wright served as a militia captain in the Revolutionary War. The house was extensively remodeled in the Italianate style around 1850, probably by the seed company owner, Silas W. Robbins. By 1869, the house was owned by Robbins’s brother, Edward Griswold Robbins. It was later the Pyquaug Inn and now the building houses a hair salon The Charles restaurant.

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The Nelson Hotchkiss House (1850)

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Nelson Hotchkiss was a New Haven builder and manufacturer, who also became a real estate developer. He and Henry Austin were involved in the Park Row development in Trenton, New Jersey in the 1840s. Later, Hotchkiss built three Italianate-style houses, most likely designed by Austin, on Chapel Street in New Haven. One was Hotchkiss’s own home, built in 1850. That same year a house was also constructed for his partner, William Lewis. In 1854, Hotchkiss built his second home on Chapel, but only lived there for two years before moving back to his earlier residence.

The Marcus H. Holcomb House (1876)

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The Italianate-style House, built in 1876 by J.F. Pratt on Main Street in Southington, was later the home of Governor Marcus H. Holcomb from 1899-1932. Holcomb was a state attorney general and superior court judge, before serving as governor of Connecticut from 1915 to 1921. Gov. Holcomb was a Mason and his house, located on the west side of Southington Green, has been the home of Friendship Lodge No. 33 since 1933.

Deep River Town Hall (1893)

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Deep River‘s distinctive Town Hall was built in 1893 in a “flatiron” shape to conform to its location, where Elm and Main Streets intersect diagonally. The building originally had businesses and a post office (which moved out in the 1960s) on the first floor, with town offices being on the second floor. The third floor has an auditorium. The building’s granite foundation and the 1905 granite fountain outside were both donated by Samuel F. Snow in memory of his wife.

Franklin and Harriet Johnson Mansion (1866)

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The Franklin and Harriet Johnson Mansion, on South Main Street in Wallingford, was built in 1866. By the late twentieth century, it was being used for offices and had lost most of its nineteenth century Italianate decorative features. In 1999, the Johnson Mansion was donated to the Wallingford Historic Preservation Trust to become the new home for the now closed Meriden American Silver Museum. Both Meriden and Wallingford were centers for silver manufacturing. The house is now being restored.