The Leete-Griswold House, on Fair Street (formerly Petticoat Lane) in Guilford, was built by Edwin A. Leete in 1856. The house is in the Octagon style, although it no longer has its original overhanging eaves with decorative brackets. Leete had grown up in the Pelatiah Leete III House on Leetes Island in Guilford. He only lived in his octagon house a short time before moving to a larger house nearby. (more…)
The Colonial house at 5 South Canterbury Road in Canterbury was built around 1765 for John Carter and originally had a full lean-to in the rear. In 1807, Nathan Adams, who operated Canterbury’s oldest corn mill, moved into the house. His son, Rufus Adams, was later a lawyer in town. In the early twentieth century, the town’s post office was located in the rear of the house.
A tavern, known as the Riverside Inn, was built on the future site of today’s Gelston House, in East Haddam, by Jabez Chapman in 1736. From 1776 to 1825, the property was operated by the Gelston family. It was next owned by Joseph Goodspeed. In 1853, the core of the current building was erected by the Gelston Hotel Company, a corporation formed by a number of East Haddam residents and headed by George Gelston. This was known as the Gelston House and later the Swan Hotel. In 1876, the Goodspeed Opera House was built next door and today the Gelston House is owned by the Goodspeed Opera House Foundation and has a Restaurant and guest rooms.
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).
The 1896 home of Rev. Edward A. George, a pastor of Willimantic’s Congregational Church, at 90 Windham Street in Willimantic, displays elements of the Shingle Style, such as the distinctive curving in the front gable. (more…)
The house traditionally known as the Jacob Pledger House, at the northeast corner of Westfield and East Streets in Middletown, was actually built by a prosperous farmer, named James Plumb, in 1804. The attached kitchen wing may have been Plumb’s original dwelling (built in 1740), before he built his early Federal-style mansion house. The house remained in the Plumb and Barry families until 1888 and is still a private residence.
The Daniel Benton Homestead in Tolland was built in 1720 and was home to members of the Benton family until 1932. In 1777, during the Revolutionary War, twenty-four Hessian officers, who had surrendered after the British defeat at Saratoga, were quartered in the house on their journey to Boston, from where they would be shipped back to Germany. Daniel Benton had three grandsons who fought in the war: two died as a result of imprisonment by the British while the third, Elisha Benton, returned home in late 1776, after his confinement on a prison ship, where he had contracted smallpox. Back home, he was nursed by Jemima Barrows, whom he had courted before the war. He died after a few weeks, and she followed shortly after, having contracted the disease during their time together. They were both buried on the property, but were not buried next to each other, as they had not married. The Daniel Benton Homestead is famous as a haunted house and numerous articles with ghost stories about the house have been written on many sites. The house was purchased in 1932 by Florrie Bishop Bowering, a WTIC radio personality, who lived there until she died in 1968. The next owners, Charles B. Goodstein and William A Shocket, donated the house the following year to the Tolland Historical Society to open as a museum.
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