The Briggs House is an 1891 Shingle-style home on Broadway in Norwich. In 1915, it was purchased from the widow of Adam Reid by Mary Brewer Briggs and her husband, Lucius Briggs, a manager of the coal department of the Edward Chappell Company.
Zebulon Hancox (1809-1899) was a notable eccentric and recluse in Stonington. The descendant of an old Stonington family, local legend claims that the girl he wanted to marry rejected him due to his poverty, so he devoted himself to making enough money to satisfy her. He did this as a fisherman and pioneering real-estate developer, who saved all he could, even to the extent of making all of his own clothes and wood buttons. Although he died at 91 with a significant sum, he ended up having never married. A number of houses he built, between 1868 and 1897, survive on Hancox Street in Stonington Borough. Adjacent to the water, these were originally unadorned two-story structures following the same basic plan and intended as houses for rental. Over the years, they have been greatly altered. One example is Rose Cottage, constructed in 1886, which has had numerous additions and embellishments.
The first meeting house in Simsbury was built in 1683. In 1736 there were lengthy debates over where to build a new and larger second meeting house, which was eventually constructed on Drake’s Hill. Construction commenced in 1740, but in 1743 services began in what was still an unfinished building, only completed in 1777. This was replaced by the current church, at the same location, in 1830. The minister at the time was Rev. Allen McLean, whose grandson, George Payne McLean was later a senator and governor of Connecticut. The First Church of Christ in Simsbury has undergone various restorations and several additions over the years.
The Collins Axe Company was started in South Canton (which later came to be known as Collinsville) in 1826. The company constructed a village to house and provide services to the workers and their original office building, built in 1830 on Front Street, included a school and space for religious services. In 1867, this structure was moved to the corner of River and North Street and divided into two units for employee housing. The new office building, constructed to replace the old one in 1868, also contained a post office, library, a third-floor hall with a stage, and space for the local DAR to meet. These rooms were eventually used for office space as the company expanded. The building is now used for various businesses, but the snow guards along the roof are still in the shape of the Collins Company trademark of crown, arm, and hammer.
At the corner where West Simsbury Road intersects with Cherry Brook Road in Canton stands the house (3 West Simsbury Road) built by Ezra Adams in 1795 (or perhaps as early as 1771). Adams had earlier lived on a tract across the road. The house has nails which were made in the Old Newgate Prison.
The Denison Homestead is the third successive house to be built on the land granted to Captain George Denison in 1654 in the Town of Stonington‘s half of Mystic (which is a census-designated place). Its immediate predecessor burned in a fire in 1717, the night before George Denison‘s grandson, known as “George the Builder,” was married. This grandson then built the current house just west of the original home, using charred timbers from the old house. The house, which became known as Pequotsepos Manor, continued to be the home of generations of the Denison family. In 1930, Ann Borodell Denison Gates created the Denison Society and after her death, in 1941, the house became the Denison Homestead Museum. Located on Pequotsepos Road in Mystic, the museum presents a different period of time the history of the Denison family in each of its rooms.
On Main Street in Stonington Borough, off Wadawanuck Square, is an Italianate and French Second Empire style mansion built in 1860 by John F. Trumbull, a merchant and factory-owner, for his son, Horace Niles Trumbull. Since 1899, the house has been owned by Josiah Culbert Palmer and his descendants.
