The Williams family, which arrived in Hartford with Thomas Hooker, recieved land grants in the north part of what is now East Hartford. Several generations later, c. 1800, brothers Jonathan (also known as John) and Joel Williams replaced an earlier Williams house with the one that is still standing at 270 Long Hill Street in East Hartford.
The house at 67 Mansion House Road in Southbury was built c. 1820 for Jonathan Stiles by his parents, Abel and Lucinda Stiles. They also built a house (1101 Main Street) for their other son Rufus. Jonathan left his house to his son Ransom, who left it to his daughter Anna and son Walter in 1912. Their sister, Bertha Stiles, married Charles W. Burpee (1859-1945), a newspaper editor and author who also served in the Connecticut National Guard. The Burpees resided at 19 Forest Street in Hartford, but in 1916 they acquired the Southbury house for use as a summer residence. Burpee was managing editor of the Hartford Courant from 1900 to 1904 and then head of the educational and editorial departments of the Phoenix Mutual Life Insurance Company of Hartford from 1904 to 1935, serving the last five of those years as editor of the Hartford Times. He was the author of several books, including The Military History of Waterbury (1891); the History of Hartford County (1928); A Century in Hartford, Being the History of the Hartford County Mutual Fire Insurance Company (1931); and The Story of Connecticut (1939). The house passed to Bertha and Charles‘s son Stiles Burpee.
Now home to Teamsters Local #191, the house at 1139 Fairfield Avenue in Bridgeport was built in 1892 for Thomas Cooke Wordin. The house, originally known as “The Pines,” was designed by the Bridgeport-based architect Joseph W. Northrop, who also designed such buildings as the Taylor Memorial Library in Milford (1895) and the Colin M. Ingersoll House in New Haven (1896). The Wordin House was illustrated in The American Architect and Building News, Vol. XLI, no. 921 (August 19, 1893)
Hough’s Tavern, once a relay station and tavern on the stagecoach line from New York to Boston, is located at 194 West Main Street in Chester. The building is dated c. 1780 or 1790.
The house at 1091 Main Street in South Windsor is currently attracting the attention of the preservation community who have sought to delay its demolition. Its current owners claim that renovation of the building, which has suffered deterioration through neglect over 80 years, is not feasible. Built in 1782, it is known as the Asahel Olcott House and was built by either Asahel (1754-1831) or his father Benoni Olcott (1716-1799). It is an unusual example in Connecticut of a house with a “Beverly jog” (usually only found in houses on the North Shore of Massachusetts). Asahel Olcott was a soldier in the Revolutionary War who responded to the Lexington Alarm in 1775.
In 1731 residents of the Shippaug district of Woodbury petitioned the General Assembly to have their own minister during the winter months, when travel to the meeting house in Woodbury was difficult. The petition was granted and the following year a small meeting house was erected on the crest of the first ridge west of the present Roxbury-Woodbury town line. In 1743 the residents of Shippaug became a separate Ecclesiastical Society from Woodbury under the name of Roxbury. A new meeting house on the same site was built in 1746. The next meeting house was built in the present town center of Roxbury (approximately at what is now 12 Church Street) in 1795. The following year, Roxbury was incorporated as a town. The current meeting house of the Roxbury Congregational Church was built at 24 Church Street in 1838.
The Thomas A. Smith House in Northford (in North Branford) is a Greek Revival residence built in 1860. Located at 16 Old Post Road, it was built for Thomas A, Smith, president of the Paug Manufacturing Company, and was later owned by Stanley T. Williams. In 1957 the house became the parish hall for the Northford Congregational Church.
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