Judah Woodruff, a descendant of Matthew Woodruff, one of the original proprietors of Farmington, fought in the French and Indian War and was a captain in the Revolutionary War. He was also a builder who constructed the First Church and 21 houses in Farmington, including his own. The Judah Woodruff House, on Mountain Spring Road, was built in 1760 and features a Connecticut River Valley doorway.
Built around 1877, the Samuel N. Kellogg House, on Washington Street in Hartford, is the only survivor from the time when the area was a leafy and elegant neighborhood called “Governor’s Row.” This fairly restrained Second Empire-style house was built for Samuel N. Kellogg, who was a brother-in-law of the retired dry goods merchant and Hartford financier Francis Cooley.
Griswoldville is a section of Wethersfield. In the nineteenth century, when the weather was bad, residents of the area often had to contend with a difficult journey to reach First Church for Sunday services. In 1872, a chapel and Sunday school building was constructed to serve Griswoldville. Men and oxen hauled the stones used for the foundation from Cromwell. In 1880, a Ladies Chapel Society was founded, which supported the chapel by holding various events to raise money.
The Ruth Callander House, also known as the White-Overton-Callander House, is on Main Street in Portland and was built around 1715 by Nathaniel White. The house was later expanded with a rear section to cover the well. Ruth Callander was a resident of the house in the twentieth century. She was a charter member of the Portland Historical Society and upon her death she bequeathed her house to become a museum of the town’s history. It opened to the public in June 2003 as the Ruth Callander House Museum of Portland History.
The Georgian Revival-style Second Church of Christ Scientist, located off Columbus Green in Hartford, was designed by the architects Isaac A. Allen & Son and was built over several years in 1920s. The foundation was finished in 1924 and in 1927, with assistance from William A. Boring, the remaining superstructure was completed. The interior dates to 1929. Like such neighboring buildings as the Connecticut State Library and Supreme Court, the church was part of an attempt to create a setting in keeping with the “City Beautiful” movement of the early twentieth century.
The Joseph Williams House is one of two octagon houses which sit side-by-side on Marlborough Street in Portland. Following a similar design, both the Williams House and the neighboring Gilbert Stancliff House were built of brownstone, with a stucco-covered exterior, between 1853 and 1855. The octagon is an eight-sided house form popularized by Orson Squire Fowler in the mid-nineteenth century through his book, The Octagon House, A Home for All. Williams was a grocer and a brother-in-law of Stancliff, who was the superintendent at the Portland brownstone quarries. It is possible that Gilbert Stancliff’s brother Charles, an architect and builder, constructed both of the octagons. The brothers were descendants of James Stancliff, Portland’s first settler. Today, the Williams House serves as an apartment building.
