Jeremiah Hollister built a saltbox house on the west side of Main Street in South Glastonbury in 1736. In 1739, he sold the house to Joseph Tryon. An addition to the house (since removed) served as a Post Office in the nineteenth century. A porch, added in the early twentieth century, was also removed when the house was remodeled in 1976. Since then, the house, which is adjacent to a strip mall, has been used for businesses. (more…)
Rev. Levi Smith of New Milford was the minister of the First Church in South Windsor from 1840 to 1849, the period during which the current church building was constructed. At that time he lived in a house on Old Main Street in East Windsor Hill which is no longer standing. In 1853, he moved into a Greek Revival house down the street which he intended to be his retirement home, but died nine months later (in 1854). Rev. Smith was a supporter of the Theological Seminary, located at that time near his home and later moved to Hartford. He founded two annual scholarships and left his library to the Seminary.
Derby’s Second Congregational Church, located on Derby Green across from Immanuel St. James Episcopal Church, began as the Birmingham Congregational Society, founded by members of the First Church who lived in what is now the center of Derby. The church was built in 1845 and dedicated on January 28, 1846. The top of the steeple was damaged by Hurricane Gloria in 1985 and has not been replaced.
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Derby’s Congregational Church was organized in 1677. The first meetinghouse was built in 1681 and the second one in 1721-1722. The current church was built in 1821. Rev. Daniel Humphreys, father of David Humphreys, was minister in Derby for many years.
The H.L. Judd Mansion was built on South Main Street in Wallingford in 1887, but the elaborate Victorian home was demolished in the 1930s. The mansion’s carriage house, however, survived and was moved to the parking lot at the rear of the Wallingford Town Hall property. According to Everett Gleason Hill’s A Modern History of New Haven and Eastern New Haven County (1918), the Judd Manufacturing Company was organized in New Haven in 1870 and:
“In 1877 the business was removed to Wallingford, where they erected a large plant and began the manufacture of stationers’ and druggists’ hardware. The principal stockholders were Morton Judd and his three sons, Albert D., Hubert L. and Edward M., Hubert L. acting as the company’s selling agent in New York. About 1870 a branch factory was established in Brooklyn, New York, for the manufacture of upholsterers’ hardware, which in 1884 was incorporated under the name of H. L. Judd & Company. In 1886 H. L. Judd & Company of Brooklyn bought the business and plant of the Judd Manufacturing Company of Wallingford and in 1897 discontinued the Brooklyn plant.”
The H.L. Judd company, which also had a curtain pole factory in Chattanooga, TN, produced various products, including mechanical banks and ink wells.
The operatic soprano Rosa Ponselle was born in Meriden in 1897. After following her older sister Carmela into vaudeville, Rosa had an audition at the Metropolitan Opera arranged by Enrico Caruso and began singing there in 1918. She went on to become one of the great sopranos of the last 100 years, retiring in 1937, at the height of her popularity. Rosa Ponselle was born Rosa Ponzillo at 175 Lewis Avenue and a few months later the family moved to 168 Foster Street. In 1900, the family moved to 159 Springdale Avenue, a bungalow-style home which her father, Benardino Ponzillo, began to enlarge, first adding a second floor and an exterior wood staircase and later a third floor. This house was Rosa’s childhood home from her third year and it would remained her parents’ home for the rest of their lives. Rosa Ponselle died in 1981, but can still be heard in recordings. The house is now a multifamily home. There was a Rosa Ponselle Museum in Meriden a few years ago, but it’s now closed.
Joseph Porter, who worked for the Sperry & Barnes meat-packing plant (on Long Wharf) and was an original board member of the Free Public Library, lived in an 1879 Italianate house on Wooster Street in New Haven.
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