Nathan Hale Schoolhouse, New London (1773)

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After teaching at the schoolhouse in East Haddam, Nathan Hale went on to become the schoolmaster at the Union School in New London, teaching there from 1774 until the Revolutionary War began in 1775. Built in 1773, the gambrel-roofed school building was originally located on State Street, was moved to Union and Golden streets in 1830 to serve as a private home and was purchased in 1890 by the Connecticut Society of the Sons of the American Revolution. Under their guardianship, the building has been moved several additional times: first to the burial ground on Huntington Street, then, in 1966, to to Crystal Avenue and in 1975 to a spot next to City Hall. In 1988, the town paid to move the school to the Parade, at the foot of State Street. For some time, it has been used as a Visitor Center and museum. The schoolhouse has just been moved a sixth time, to a new plaza adjacent to the Water Street parking garage.

Nathan Hale Schoolhouse, East Haddam (1750)

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This Memorial Day, we honor the Connecticut patriot and hero of the Revolutionary War, Nathan Hale. The Nathan Hale Schoolhouse, in East Haddam is a one room school, built in 1750. After his graduation from Yale, Hale taught here as schoolmaster for the Winter session, 1773-1774. The building was later moved from Goodspeed Plaza (a location now marked by a bust of Hale) to serve as a house and around 1900 was moved again to its present site on a hill, overlooking the Connecticut River. It is now a museum, operated by the Connecticut Society of the Sons of the American Revolution. Nathan Hale moved on from East Haddam to teach at the Nathan Hale Schoolhouse in New London, where he was working when he joined the Continental Army. He was captured and hanged by the British as a spy on September 22, 1776.

Capt. Henry S. Stark House (1852)

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The 1852 Italianate home of Capt. Henry S. Stark and his wife, Mary Rathbun Stark, is on West Mystic Avenue in Mystic. Mary Stark supervised the construction because her husband, a ship captain, was in command of a bark voyaging to Italy. The avenue was called Skipper Lane because many ship captains built homes there. Capt. Stark also made voyages to Mexico and Hawaii. His wife accompanied him on his voyage to Honolulu from 1854 to 1856 on the clipper ship B.F. Hoxie. Mary Stark wrote a series of letters during the voyage, many to her daughter, Lizzie Stark, describing her experiences.

Mystic Seaport Lighthouse (1966)

Mystic Seaport is a living history maritime museum, which recreates a nineteenth century seaport. One of the museum buildings is an exact replica of the current lighthouse at Brant Point on Nantucket. The first lighthouse at Brant Point was built in 1746 and has been followed by many successive structures over the years. The present light, which is the lowest above sea level in New England, was built in 1901. The Mystic Seaport replica lighthouse was built in 1966. Inside, it currently displays a multimedia exhibition about lighthouses, called Sentinels of the Sea (video). (more…)

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.