In the first half of the early nineteenth century, a store occupied the lot at 63 Hurlbutt Road in Gales Ferry in Ledyard. Starting in 1831, the store was owned by Samuel and Ira Vincent. At Samuel‘s death in 1837, his widow Martha sold off the store goods. She owned the property until 1843 when it was inherited by Ira’s widow, Sarah Baker Vincent (1802-1885). Around 1850, she built a house in place of the store.
The house at 335 Old Whitfield Street in Guilford has a sign that reads as follows:
1842 Harmon B. Johnson
Union Army Private
Died For One FlagMarch 8, 1865
Kinston, NC
Harmon B. Johnson served in the 15th Connecticut Infantry Regiment during the Civil War. His name is inscribed on the Soldiers’ Monument in Guilford under the heading “Fredericksburg.” The 15th Connecticut fought at Fredericksburg but Johnson was killed at the Battle of Wyse Fork, fought March 7-10, 1865 near Kinston, North Carolina. The house is now a condominium unit.
Happy Halloween!! In keeping with the Fall spirit, today’s building is the Old Cider Mill in Glastonbury. Recognized as the oldest continuously operating Cider Mill in the United States (starting in the early nineteenth century?), the current building was constructed as early as the 1870s.
The building at 42 Main Street in North Stonington was built just before 1809 by Daniel Packer and Jedidiah Randall. It served as a store and for a time as a jail. It was moved from another spot on the same lot in the late nineteenth century. The building was the T.S. & H.D. Wheeler Store (a general store) before it was converted into North Stonington‘s Town Hall in 1904. A neighboring garage was converted into a new Town Hall in 1978. Today the old Town Hall is used for the offices of the selectmen, resident state trooper, and other town officials.
The house at 681 Middle Turnpike in the Mansfield Four Corners section of Mansfield, not far from Storrs, was built sometime before 1820. It had a number of owners until 1843, when it was purchased by Rev. Aaron R. Livermore (1810-1892), who was the minister of Mansfield’s North Society Church, now Storrs Congregational Church, from 1843 to 1858. The house was next owned by the Fish family.
The West Street School is a one-room schoolhouse at 1432 West Street in Southington. It was erected about 1760 and was in continuous operation, serving the northwest quarter of town, until 1946. It has been little changed over the years, retaining its eighteenth-century exterior features and a nineteenth-century interior, which includes a pot-bellied wood stove. The site also has the school’s associated outbuildings: a woodshed and a privy. In 1933, the West Street School Alumni Association was formed. In 1947, a year after the school closed permanently, this group, by then called the West Street School and Community Association, obtained a 99-year lease on the building from the town. The West Street School is currently maintained by the Southington Historical Society. The school originally sat closer to the roadbed, but West Street was widened and lowered in front of the school in 1977, so that the building is now at least twelve feet above the road.
The house at 186 Rowayton Avenue in Rowayton, Norwalk was built in 1842 by Nicholas Vincent, a New York ship builder, for his daughter, Catherine Raymond Vincent, who married John Thomes. The house is named for a later owner, Capt. William C. Sammis (1818-1891). A coastal shipping trader in oysters until the railroad drove him out of business, Capt. Sammis purchased the house in 1866 and became a farmer, sending his produce by train to market in New York City.
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