Eleazer Welton House (1830)

The house at 72 Welton Hill Road in Roxbury was thought to have been built c. 1790 by the Welton family, which owned land in the eastern part of Roxbury for many years. According to Homes of Old Woodbury (1959), by the early nineteenth century the house was owned by Eleazer Welton, whose widow, Nancy M. Wlton, left it to their son, William Welton. He deeded it to a later Eleazer Welton in 1873. The book Roxbury Place-name Stories: Facts, Folklore, Fibs (2009), by Jeannine Green, dates the house to 1830 and speculates there may have been only one Eleazer Welton. After his first wife Nancy died, he left their son William with her father Syrenus Ward. Eleazer married his second wife, Adelia, in 1849 and his son William was probably quitclaiming his rights in the house in 1873.

Alfred Rogers House (1899)

The house at 23 Hurlbutt Road in Gales Ferry, Ledyard was built c. 1899 by Adelbert V. Alexander, a carpenter, on land he had acquired from Simeon A. Bailey in 1892. It is said that Alexander also built the nearby Alfred Rogers House, 2 Maple Corners Road, and then built his own house as a mirror image, with the same floor plan in reverse. Rufus W. Hurlbutt, whose family’s farm once covered most of the area of Gales Ferry Village, bought the house in 1920.

Downtown District Schoolhouse, Norwalk (1826)

One of the historic buildings located at Mill Hill Historic Park in Norwalk is the Downtown District Schoolhouse, a one-room school erected in 1826. The schoolhouse originally stood near what was then an intersection of Willow Street and East Avenue. East Norwalk was known as the “Down Town” district until the late nineteenth century. The building was used as a school until 1876 and was later used as a residence. The building was moved several times over the years, settling at Mill Hill when Interstate 95 was built through East Norwalk.

Union Society of Phoenixville House (1806)

Phoenixville is a village in the town of Eastford. At the junction of Routes 44 and 198 (4 Hartford Turnpike) is a former residence that would become the Union Society of Phoenixville House. It was built in 1806 as the home of Smith Snow (1784-1842), a mill-owner. In 1858, Snow’s heirs conveyed the house to Lydia Clark, the wife of his nephew, Albert B. Clark (1825-1903), a shoemaker. Around the turn of the century, the house was already being used as a nondenominational Sunday School, which officially incorporated in 1907 as the Union Society of Phoenixville and purchased the building. It also served as a meeting place for the local community and by the 1940s was commonly known as the Community House. The building was moved a short distance west of its original location circa 1930 to accommodate highway improvements. The building was in use until 2000, but already before that time fewer events were being held and maintenance issues had made preserving the building difficult (by the 1960s the upper floor had become unsafe). The Union Society sold the building to the Town of Eastford in 2002 and it has since been the object of preservation efforts (the roof was replaced in 2009).

Seeley-Dibble-Pinkney House (1820)

The home of the Rowayton Historical Society is the Seeley-Dibble-Pinkney House, located at 177 Rowayton Avenue in Norwalk. The house was built c. 1790-1820 and has been altered over the years. Part of the basement floor is paved with left over shipping ballast. Alfred Seeley purchased the house in 1820. He was a successful farmer and store-owner. He also built the first packet that traveled between Rowayton to New York. Seeley’s youngest daughter, Hannah Minerva, married Alphonso Dibble, who took title to the house and store in 1890. In turn their youngest daughter, Gertrude Hannah, who was married to William Pinkney, next occupied the house. The house was sold by Dorothy Cowles Pinkney, poet and widow of William Pinkney Jr., to the Sixth Taxing District of Norwalk (Rowayton) in 1971

Harry French House (1823)

Clover Nook Farm is an eighth generation family-owned farm at 50 Fairwood Road in Bethany. The farm started in 1765 when David French married Hannah Lines and the couple settled on the French family’s Bethany land. Their son, Harry French, built a farmhouse in 1823 that still stands at the center of the farm. The later generations to run the farm were Harry‘s daughter, Jane, and her husband, Justus Peck; their daughter Charlotte and her husband, Samuel Woodward; their son Sherman, followed by his son, Sherman, Jr.; and now Sherman, Jr.’s daughter Deborah and her husband and son, Eric and Lars Demander.

Columbus Circle Ensign-Bickford Houses (1913)

In 1892 the Ensign-Bickford Company of Simsbury acquired a half interest in the Climax Fuse Company of Avon. By 1907 the companies merged. Following its practice in Simsbury, Ensign-Bickford erected housing for its workers in Avon, including a number of houses built c. 1913 around a small green called Farmington Court. Unusually for the time these were mostly single-family homes instead of multi-family tenements. This was part of a new movement in which industrial companies began erecting suburban-type neighborhoods for their workers. Farmington Court was renamed Columbus Circle in 1930, but which time the residents were primarily Italian-Americans. The Prince Thomas of Savoy Society, an Italan-American social club, built its headquarters nearby in 1932.