Edward Hooker House (1811)

On High Street in Farmington is an 1811 Federal-style house built for Edward Hooker, a descendant of Thomas Hooker (Hartford’s first minister) and Samuel Hooker (Farmington’s second minister). Edward Hooker was a farmer and operated a small preparatory school for boys, called the “Old Red College,” in his parents old farmhouse in Farmington. He closed the school in 1816, when the town was planning to open its own academy in the village center. Deacon Edward Hooker’s daughter, Elizabeth, married Francis Gillette, a future senator. The house was inherited, after Edward Hooker’s death in 1846, by his son, John Hooker, a lawyer, who in 1841 had married Isabella Beecher Hooker, the younger half-sister of Harriet Beecher Stowe. The couple lived in Farmington until they moved to Hartford in the early 1850s, establishing the neighborhood of Nook Farm together with the Gillettes. The Farmington house remained in the Hooker family until it was sold in 1864.

John Hooker was an abolitionist. On Mill Lane in Farmington is Deming’s Store, where Hooker rented an office, next to a room used by the Africans from the Amistad during their stay in Farmington. John Hooker also helped the Rev. James Pennington, a former slave in Maryland who had escaped to Connecticut, attended Yale and become a Congregational minister. After the Fugitive Slave Law was passed in 1850, African-Americans living in the North who were still regarded as slaves in the southern states were in great danger. In 1851, Hooker legally purchased Pennington’s freedom from slavery from the estate of his former owner. Pennington wrote a book about his experiences, called The Fugitive Blacksmith, published in 1849. Later, influenced by his wife Isabella, Hooker became involved in the Women’s Suffrage Movement, presenting a bill in the state legislature making husbands and wives equal in property rights, which finally passed in 1877.

First Church of Christ in Mansfield (1866)

firstchurchmansfield.JPG

The first Congregational community in Tolland County was organized in Mansfield in 1710. The first minister was Rev. Eleazer Williams, who was succeeded by Richard Salter. The original meetinghouse was replaced by a new church in 1754 (which can be seen in an 1836 sketch of Mansfield by John Warner Barber). When that second meetinghouse was destroyed in a fire, the current church building was constructed in 1866. The First Church of Christ in Mansfield is located on Storrs Road in Mansfield Center. It was designed in the Italianate style, with its facade featuring arched windows influenced by Italian Romanesque churches. The steeple is a replacement of the original, which was destroyed in the 1938 hurricane.

The Mason-Knowlton Place (1829)

mason_knowltonplace.jpg

The Mason-Knowlton Place is a Greek Revival-style house on the Old Turnpike in the Four Corners district of Mansfield, probably built in the late 1820s. In 1864, it was purchased by John Chauncey Mason, who farmed the land and ran a nearby mill with his two sons. In 1879, Mason moved to a farm across the Turnpike and his son, Charles Mason, inherited the house. In the 1880s, Charles Mason added the front porch, using wood he had sawed at his mill. He also added additional rooms. After Mason’s widow’s death, in 1940, the house was owned by his daughter, Eva Belle Mason Knowlton, and her husband, Henry Knowlton, who ran an antiques business in the house. She died in 1983, at the age of 101. A biographical article on Eva Belle Mason can be downloaded.

The Altnaveigh Inn (1734)

altnaveighinn.jpg

The Altnaveigh Inn and Restaurant, on Storrs Road in the Spring Hill area of Mansfield, is located in a colonial house built by Isaac Sargeant, on land given to him by his father, John Sargeant, probably in 1734. The house was later owned by Dan Storrs, who purchased it from Sargeant’s widow in 1794. It was later bought by Azariah Freeman and remained in his family for over a century. It may also have, for a time, been occupied by the miniature portraitist, George Freeman. In 1951, it was purchased by Edith McComb, who named it Altnaveigh, Gaelic for “hill top.” For much of the last century it has been an inn and restaurant.