Planter & Porter Boarding House (1854)

In 1848, William Planter and Samuel Q. Porter purchased the Stone and Carrington paper mill in Unionville. They soon built another mill and in 1860 organized the Planter & Porter Manufacturing Company, which produced fine writing paper and book paper. As one of Unionville’s largest employers, they needed housing for their workers and erected at least five rental houses in the neighborhood. They erected the rooming and boarding house at 28 Elm Street in 1854. Franklin C. Chamberlin, a Hartford lawyer, bought the building in 1878 and continued to rent its rooms out to local factory workers. In 1889 the house became the residence of Thomas Mulrooney, an Irish immigrant who worked at the American Writing Paper Company (which had acquired Planter & Porter in 1877), and his wife Mary Jane Mulrooney, who was born in Burlington to Irish immigrant parents. Mrs. Mulrooney rented out rooms in the house to supplement the family’s income. The house remained in the family until 1941.

Gordon S Miller Farm Museum (2002)

One of the properties of the Totoket Historical Society in North Branford is the Gordon S. Miller Farm Museum. Housed in a traditional New England barn constructed in 2002, the museum collection contains farm machinery and farm implements used in Northford and North Branford going back over two centuries, as well as artifacts discovered in local archeological digs sponsored by the society. The museum is named for Gordon S. Miller, a long time resident of Northford and a former President of the Totoket Historical Society.

John P. Chamberlin Apartments (1889)

Yesterday I posted a workers’ tenement building erected by Nathaniel Hayden, a Civil War veteran, in Unionville in 1875. It was one of several tenements constructed in that community in Farmington during a period of industrialization in the nineteenth century. A growing industrial labor force was being drawn to Unionville’s paper mills. Another tenement, located next door to Hayden’s, was erected by John P. Chamberlin (1823-1893), a mechanic, sometime between 1878 and 1889. Chamberlin had purchased the property from Franklin Chamberlin in 1867. The relationship between the two Chamberlins is unknown; Franklin, who had links with local paper mill owners, was a lawyer in Hartford and a neighbor of Mark Twain. The property that John P. Chamberlin acquired included a house on Main Street and land to the rear, where both he and Hayden would build tenement buildings along a passway that would become Maple Avenue. In the 1870s, Chamberlin also erected the rental house at 66 Maple Avenue. Chamberlin’s 6-tenement building, 60-64 Maple Avenue, passed out of his family in 1919.

Gull School (1790)

The Gull School, also known as the Gott School or District Six, is a one-room schoolhouse that once served the southeast section of the Town of Hebron. It was originally located at the northwest intersection of Grayville Road and Old Colchester Road. Built in 1790, it burned down and was rebuilt in 1816, continuing to serve as a school until it closed in 1919. It reopened in 1929 and then continued as a school until 1935. It was sold by the town a decade later and the new owner put it up on blocks. A decade later it was moved to a field where it stood for many years. In 1971 Henrietta Green, who taught at the school from 1930 to 1931, moved the building to the property of the Green family in the Amston section of town, on Church Street, near the intersection with Niles Road. For the next thirty years she welcomed school groups to visit the building, which she had refurnished to appear as it had been during her time teaching at the school. The Green family deeded the school to the town, which then moved it in 2001 to its current address at 8 Marjorie Circle. Three years later the interior of the school was restored for the Hebron Historical Society as an Eagle Scout project by Will Aubin and in 2005 the exterior was restored as an Eagle Scout project by Alex Breiding, both with help from Hebron Troop 28 Boy Scouts.

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Woodbridge Pizza (1898)

Woodbridge Pizza in Manchester is the most recent occupant of a building erected c. 1898. Commercial structures have occupied the site, at 489 Middle Turnpike East, since the early nineteenth century. At the time the area was a village known as Manchester Green. Its settlement predated the incorporation of Manchester as a town in 1823. The community’s post office, dating to 1808, was originally located across the street in the Woodbridge Tavern, but had been moved to the store by Wells Woodbridge. Located next door is a house built by Wells’ brother, Deodatus Woodbridge. Woodbridge and Keney operated the store in the 1840s. and E. P. Hatch had a store and post office in the 1860s. At one point the store was owned by J. B. Williams, who would later found a famous soap factory in Glastonbury.

Creamery Gallery (1893)

The original Canton Creamery, which is not related to the modern Canton Creamery at 465 Albany Turnpike, was a cooperative association, started in 1879, that sold milk and butter from local farms to retail dairies in Hartford and New Haven. Between 1893 and 1896, the operation was moved from its original location on West Road to the building at 150 Cherry Brook Road in Canton. The building‘s heavy concrete foundation was designed to support butter making equipment. The Canton Creamery Association came under new management in 1918 and dissolved in 1947/1982. More recently, the building has been the home of Canton Clay Works and the Creamery Gallery.