At 4 Agawam Avenue in the Borough of Fenwick in Old Saybrook is a Queen Anne cottage that was once located on the waterfront in Fenwick. It was built in 1885 for Henry P. Morgan of Brooklyn, who owned a large dry goods business, and was moved to its current location (4 Agawam Avenue) around 1901 by Ernest Williams, who was in the building supply business. His daughter Dorothy married Everett Francis of Middletownn. You can read more about the cottage in Marion Hepburn Grant’s The Fenwick Story (Connecticut Historical Society, 1974), page 170. (more…)
According to the Genealogical and Family History of the State of Maine, Volume 1 (1909):
Caleb, son of Young and Jerusha (Beebe) Fuller, was born in Colchester, Connecticut, in 1735. He removed to Ellington in 1747. He graduated from Yale College in 1758, and received the degree of A. M. in 1762. He is called Deacon in some records, and Reverend in others. He married, October 28. 1762, Hannah Weld, daughter of Rev. Habijah Weld, the famous minister who preached at Attleboro, Massachusetts, for fifty-five years. [….] Caleb Fuller removed in 1771 to Middletown, Connecticut, and in 1790 to Hanover, New Hampshire, where he died August 20, 1815.
The New York Genealogical and Biographical Record (Vol. 35, 1904) states that, “Caleb Fuller seems never to have been a settled pastor, though doubtless he often preached as a supply, since manuscript sermons of his are now in possession of his descendants.” He moved to Hanover, NH, “perhaps because he desired to educate his son at Dartmouth College,” where he became “Deacon of the College Church.” Caleb Fuller‘s gambrel-roofed house in Middletown, built in 1771, originally stood at the corner of Main and William Street. It was moved west on William Street in 1842 when the First Baptist Church was constructed on that corner. In 1975 the house was scheduled for demolition as part of a redevelopment plan, but it was saved as part of an adaptive reuse plan. Moved to its current address at 49 Main Street, the house had its exterior restored and it was converted to office use.
The Borough of Fenwick (pdf) in Old Saybrook has long had its own house of worship, St. Mary’s-by-the-Sea. Religious services for the Fenwick summer community were initially led by Rev. Francis Goodwin in his own home. A leader of both Hartford and Fenwick society and an amateur architect, Rev. Francis Goodwin (1839-1923) championed the development of more parks in Hartford as the city’s first commissioner of parks. In 1883, Rev. Goodwin designed and built a small chapel on his property for Sunday worship. By 1886, the chapel was too small to accommodate the number of worshipers, so it was moved to its current location (30 Agawam Avenue) and enlarged with additional pews and a bell tower. St. Mary’s-by-the-Sea is a Shingle style structure, as are so many of the Fenwick summer cottages. You can read more about St. Mary’s-by-the-Sea in Marion Hepburn Grant’s The Fenwick Story (Connecticut Historical Society, 1974), pages 37-49.
Continuing our look at the cottages of the Borough of Fenwick in Old Saybrook, we come to a house that has been much expanded over time. Leverett Brainard (1828-1902) purchased one of the original Fenwick lots in 1871, but he and his wife, Mary Jerusha Bulkeley (sister of Morgan G. Bulkeley) did not immediately undertake the building of a summer cottage. In 1877, Brainard acquired a Fenwick cottage that had been built circa 1871 by J.A. Eldridge of Springfield and had it moved to his own lot and remodeled to suit his needs. Over the years, as the family expanded, they added new rooms to the cottage, which came to bear little resemblance to its original appearance. Leverett Brainard, who lived on Washington Street in Hartford, was born in Colchester and attended Bacon Academy. He moved to Hartford in 1853 to work for the City Fire Insurance Company. He eventually became the president of The Case, Lockwood & Brainard Company, which was one of the largest publishing companies in New England. As his obituary in the New England Stationer and Printer (Vol. XVI. No. 5, August 1902) stated, Brainard was “one of Hartford’s most prominent citizens, and closely identified with the commercial progress of Hartford, Conn., for nearly half a century.” The house passed to the Brainard’s son, Newton C. Brainard, who left it to his nephew, his sister Edith’s son, Frank Kelso Davis. You can read more about the cottage in Marion Hepburn Grant’s The Fenwick Story (Connecticut Historical Society, 1974), pages 91-99. (more…)
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