The house at 1200 Main Street in Glastonbury was built c. 1770 by Samuel Rice. His niece, Anna Cornwall (1778-1855), ran a school for girls in the house in the nineteenth century. She was the daughter of Nathaniel Cornwall, who operated a textile mill in Chatham. A number of nineteenth century samplers survive that share characteristics indicating they were all produced by Miss Cornwall’s students.
In about 1892, Mary Frances Clark Hoppin (1842–1934) built a mansion in Pomfret called Courtlands. She was the widow of Dr. Courtland Hoppin (1834–1876) of Providence, Rhode Island, and was the daughter of Joseph Washington Clark, a wealthy Boston investor, who had a summer home in Pomfret. She had earlier lived in a house she had built in Pomfret after her husband died. She later gave that home to the Pomfret School, where it is now Robinson House, the school’s admissions office. After her death, Courtlands became St. Robert’s Hall, a Jesuit monastery and seminary, dedicated in December 1935. Since 1974, the mansion and 114-acre estate have been home to the New England Laborers’ Training Academy, with an address of 37 Deerfield Road in Pomfret.
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Joseph Sage built the house at 532 Main Street in Portland when he sold his earlier home, the Giles Hall House at 643 Main Street, to his son.
The Greek Revival house at 585 Main Street in Portland was built in the 1840s (possibly 1847). It was originally the home of Stephen H. White. This may be the Stephen H. White, son of George White, who is described in the Memorials of Elder John White (1860), by Allyn S. Kellogg, page 206 as
born in Portland, Dec. 15, 1820. He resides there, and is a farmer and carpenter.
He married twice, first in 1844 to Sarah Risley of Glastonbury (died 1846); second in 1850 to Almira W. Ufford of Portland.
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The house at 15 Pearl Street in Middletown was built in either 1838 or 1839, at a time when the street was experiencing development as a neighborhood for the urban middleclass of tradespeople and small business owners. It was erected by George E. Barrows, who had a joiner’s shop on the property and may have contributed his skills to the construction. From 1851 to 1883, it was the home of Charles H. Pelton, a printer who had worked with Horace Greeley in New York. The house remained in the Pelton family until 1915.
The house at 11 Gravel Street in Mystic was built about 1812 by Capt. Avery Brown, who commanded the sloop Minerva. He also served as bos’n on the Hero, a 47-foot sloop that was built at the Packard Shipyard in Mystic as a costal trader and became a privateer and blockade runner during the War of 1812. Nathaniel Palmer of Stonington was captain of the vessel on a sealing voyage in 1820 when he discovered Antarctica. Next to Capt. Brown’s house is the John Fellows House at 13 Gravel Street, built c. 1827-1836. It is traditionally called the “spite house” because it was built out far enough into the street to spoil Capt. Brown’s view upriver.
The house at 140 Burrows Hill Road in Hebron was built c. 1735–1744 by a Mr. Porter. It was purchased by the Smith family in 1794 and remained in that family until 2009. Nathan Smith, the second Smith to live in the home, remarried at age 65. In 1853, he added the Greek Revival north ell, where his father lived after retiring from farming. It is one of three additions that have been made to the house’s north side. There is also a kitchen addition at the rear of the house.
The Smith farm grew to hundreds of acres and included Prophet’s Rock, the town’s oldest historic landmark. The legend of Prophet’s Rock is related by Gov. John S. Peters in his “Historical Notes,” written in 1843 and quoted by F.C. Bissell in Hebron, Connecticut Bicentennial (1908). A group of men from Windsor had set out to explore and find places to settle in the area.
While the men were making preparations for their families in the summer of 1706 they brought their provisions with them and remained for weeks at their new home. Their wives being anxious for the welfare of their husbands and unwilling to be left too long alone, four or five started one shining morning for the promised land, twenty long miles through the wilderness, regulating their course by marked trees and crossing the streams on logs felled for that purpose. Night overtook them in the lower part of Gilead, they wandered from the line and brought up on the hill south of Nathan Smith’s house. Fearing the wolves would regale themselves upon their delicious bodies they concluded to roost upon the top of the high rock on the summit of said hill. Here they proclaimed their lamentations to the winds. This novel serenade attracted the attention of their husbands, who wandered towards the sound until they fortunately but unexpectedly found their wives on the rock, which they had chosen for their night’s repose. The gratification of the interview can be better imagined than expressed.
The location of this rock has been handed down to the present time and it is now known as “Prophet’s Rock.”
In 2003, when the Smith family had decided to develop part of their land off Burrows Hill Road, Prophet’s Rock and an easement to reach it from Burrows Hill Road were deeded to the town.
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