The house at 82 Willard Avenue in Newington was built in 1859 and is an excellent example of the Italianate style. A 1955 Harvard Alumni directory lists it as the address of Harold Ingalls Dyer. The house was one of several historic properties specifically excluded from a proposed new development area centered around the recently opened CTfastrak Busway station.
As related in a section entitled “Modern Buildings of Conspicuous Design” in the 1921 book Modern Connecticut Homes and Homecrafts:
It is generally accepted that good building construction prevails in Connecticut, so it must naturally follow then that to win distinction in this field is evidence of exceptional merit, as in the instance of Mr. Lewis A. Miller of Meriden, who during a business career of about a quarter century has built, as general contractor, many structures of various kinds throughout the state that are notable for the excellence of their craftsmanship.
Much of Mr. Miller’s work has been in the line of commercial, industrial and others of the larger type of construction, yet one of the finest residences in the central part of Connecticut is of his making. This house, the home of Mr. A. L. Pelton in Winthrop Terrace, Meriden, is conspicuous for the excellence of its workmanship and materials. Designed in an adaptation of the Spanish style, the walls of the house are of white stucco on interlocking hollow tile, and the roof is of red Spanish tile which makes it particularly effective in its color combinations.
While the house’s color scheme has changed (the roof is no longer red tile), this impressive home, built c. 1918, still stands at 126 Winthrop Terrace in Meriden. The name of A. L. Pelton appears in numerous advertisements from c. 1908-1922 that appeared in such magazines as Popular Science, The World’s Work, Popular Mechanics, The Magazine of Business and The Cosmopolitan. Head of the Pelton Publishing Company, he promised to make men rich by selling them the book The Power of Will, by Frank Channing Haddock, a self-help author. Pelton also published other books such as Creed of the Conquering Chief (1915).
In 1798 Ebenezer Hale (1771-1843) of Glastonbury married Sarah Cornwall of Portland. The couple shared the house at 1381 Main Street in Glastonbury with Ebenezer’s brother Gideon Hale, Jr., who married Anna Case in 1803. Eventually the house became too small for two families and Ebenezer Hale built his own house at 1378 Main Street in 1806. Ebenezer’s grandsons, George and John Howard Hale, started a peach orchard in 1866. The farm paymaster would pay the orchard workers at the long window on the north side of the house. John H. Hale developed peach trees that could better withstand the northern climate. The first to grade their fruit, the brothers developed their business on a national scale with 1200 acres in Connecticut and Georgia by 1915. As related in A Handbook of New England (second edition, 1917):
It was J. H. Hale, the ‘Peach King,’ who more than any other man in its history put Glastonbury on the map. He began in a small way with upland farms worth $10 an acre, and on this “barren” land proved that peaches could be produced, unequaled in flavor, which would bring the highest prices in the nearby New England markets. Wealth has poured in upon him and is utilized in developing at Fort Valley in Georgia the greatest peach-growing industry of the world.
An interesting recollection of J.H. Hale appears in a speech made by Frank B. White of Chicago at the annual convention of the Wisconcin State Board of Agriculture and printed in the 1905 Annual Report of the Wisconsin State Board of Agriculture:
I had occasion to speak to a gentleman this morning about the Hon. J. H. Hale, of South Glastonbury, Conn. We call him the “Peach King.” When he began the production of peaches in Connecticut, he at once sought to specialize his work and to send forth “Hale’s” peaches as the best product in the market, and he has made a great reputation simply by the peach itself. He had each peach carefully wrapped and on each wrapper it was advertised that it was a “Hale” peach, and in putting up packages, he was careful that every peach should be the same, from the top to the bottom of the package. In doing that, he said he found great difficulty, because he even had to discharge men who insisted upon putting nicer peaches at the top. He said, “I had to discharge my men and employ girls, because the girls are more honest than the men.” After that he had no trouble whatever. But when he put these peaches in the great markets of the east, he found that the commission merchants rather discouraged the idea, they didn’t care to bother with them. He demanded a better price, and he just asked the privilege of putting them in that people might know what Hale’s peaches really were, and it was but a short time before he had them coming for his peaches; letters were being sent to him from different parts of the country, saying, “Send on your peaches, our customers want them,” and from that little beginning he now has 2,300 acres of peaches in a bearing condition, and last year he shipped 210 large refrigerator cars from his Georgia orchard to the markets of the north and had a ready market for all he could produce. He made that market by judicious advertising of the article itself.
Bear in mind, it is the man on the farm that will make the success just as surely as it is the man behind the gun that will win the victory.
The brick house at 273 South Main Street in Cheshire was built c. 1850. It is transitional in style between the Greek Revival and the Italianate Villa. Two owners of the house in the mid-nineteenth century were E. Talmadge and U. P. Hokum.
The house at 671 Main Street in Middlefield originally stood on the site of the David Lyman II House. Built in 1785 by David Lyman (1746-1815), it passed to his son William Lyman (1783-1869). After William’s son, David Lyman II (1820-1871), built his grand new residence on the property, the old Lyman House was moved to its current address in 1864 and was altered from a central chimney to a two-chimney house. The front columned verandah was possibly added around 1901.
The Giles Barber House is an “L”-shaped plan Federal/Greek Revival style residence at 411-413 Windsor Avenue in Windsor. It was built c. 1825 using bricks made nearby, at brickyards on the east side of Windsor Avenue.
In 1769, Reuben Stone built the house at 22 Broad Street in Guilford, near the home of his brother, Caleb Stone. Reuben Stone (1726-1804) was a supporter of the Revolutionary War who procured supplies for the soldiers. In 1842, the Greek Revival entryway was added and the house was altered from one-and-a-half stories with a steeper roof to two-stories. The house was later owned by Leverett C. Stone (1819-1892) and other Stone descendants.
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