Historically associated with Josiah Hotchkiss, a tavern-keeper in Cheshire, the house at 589 South Main Street is believed to have been built by him around 1744. The building’s lack of a protruding summer beam, however, might suggest a later date of construction.
Timothy Starkey, Jr.’s house in Essex was built in 1800, when he leased land from Samuel Lay to build his home on the corner of Main Street and Ferry Street (the latter street being laid out in the 1820s, after the house was constructed). Starkey later bought the land and property extending along Main Street to the wharf, developed Pratt Street and was involved in various business ventures. Timothy Starkey married his cousin, Mary Ann Hayden, a daughter of Uriah Hayden. Starkey owned the Hayden-Starkey Store with his brothers-in-law, Samuel Hayden and Ebenezer Hayden II. Timothy’s brother, Felix Starkey, lived next door to him and married Esther Hayden, who was also a daughter of Uriah Hayden. The house later passed to Timothy’s daughter, Phoebe, who had married William S. Hayden. The house remained in the family until 1974 and is is now used for businesses.
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Joseph Arnold, not to be confused with the Joseph Arnold who lived in the Thankful Arnold House (although both men were descendants of the original Haddam proprietor, Joseph Arnold), built his home in the center of Haddam around 1765. Joseph’s son, Simon Arnold (1778-1867), occupied the house after his 1804 marriage to Alice Smith (1778-1834). The home was also occupied, from 1838 until his death in 1869, by Samuel Arnold, the son of Joseph and Thankful Arnold. Samuel Arnold served as a US Congressman from 1857 to 1859. The house, which was significantly altered in the nineteenth century but restored in the twentieth century, remained in the Arnold family until 1967.
The house of Dr. Ezra Mather, on Main Street in Essex, was built soon after 1815. Dr. Mather‘s father, Elisha Mather, was a physician in Centerbrook and Ezra’s brother, Dr. Ulysses Mather, continued to live there. The house remained in the Mather family into the 1950s.
In the nineteenth century, East Haddam‘s Upper Landing was home to a fashionable hotel known as the Champion House. The original brick hotel was built in 1782 for Samuel Phillips Lord and it was later purchased by Noah Buckley. The Federal-style building was later Victorianized and enlarged in 1839, 1858, and 1880. Today, it is the Champion House Apartments.
In the 1920s, this 1917 Colonial Revival house on Prospect Avenue in Hartford, was occupied by Alfred C. Fuller, founder of the the Fuller Brush Company. Originally from Nova Scotia, Alfred Carl Fuller, the original “Fuller Brush Man,” emphasized door-to-door selling—Fuller‘s memoir was titled, A Foot in the Door. The symmetrical house, which interestingly has non-symmetrical chimneys, was designed by William T. Marchant of Hartford.
The Amasa Day House in Moodus (in East Haddam) was built in 1816 by Colonel Julius Chapman, who farmed on the property. After his death, in 1842, the property was sold at auction and purchased by Amasa Day. In the following years, Day, who was an insurance agent and banker, sold off parts of the land. The house was inherited by his daughter, Katherine and her husband, Eugene Chaffee, who worked for the New York Net and Twine Company, one of several twine factories in Moodus. Their son was Dr. Amasa Day Chaffee, a well-known art photographer. The house was donated to Connecticut Landmarks in 1967 and is now a museum.
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