Christian Swartz House (1875)

Christian Swartz House

Christian Swartz (1846-1932) served as mayor of South Norwalk in 1880 and again in 1882. He was born in Württemberg, Germany and came to America with his parents in 1849 at the age of three. In 1868, in partnership with Jeremiah Bernd of Danbury, Swartz opened a cigar shop in South Norwalk called C. Swartz and Company. In 1880, this became the Old Well Cigar Company. As related in Vol. IV of Men of Mark in Connecticut (1906), by William R. Goodspeed:

In 1882 the business of South Norwalk had grown to such large proportions that another bank was deemed a necessity. In company with Hon. R. H. Rowan, Hon. John H. Ferris, Hon. Talmadge Baker, and other prominent men, he was one of the organizers of the City National Bank, and has continued as a director of said bank since that time. In the re-organizatíon of the Norwalk Lock Company, he became one of the directors and has continued as such.

Christian Swartz‘s public services began before he entered business life. At the age of eighteen years he enlisted in the Union cause in the Civil War and served until peace was established, a period of ten months. Since that time his public services have been political rather than military, and to him politics has always meant service to his fellows of the best and highest kind. He has followed the tenets of the Democratic political body and became a Gold Democrat. He was city councilman in 1878, mayor of South Norwalk in 1880 and again in 1882, sheriff of Fairfield County from 1884 to 1887, and he has been a member of the state shell-fish commission since 1893. He is the present chairman of the city water commission, president of the board of estimates and taxation of the town of Norwalk and President of the Norwalk Hospital. He has been in many other ways a strong factor in local politics and civic growth and prosperity.

A man of deep religious convictions and training, Mr. Swartz is a devoted and regular member of the South Norwalk Congregational Church. He is a chairman of the business committee of that church and a member of the Christian Inquiry Club connected with that body. He has many fraternal and social ties, and is a Mason, and a Knight Templar. He was elected Grand Commander of the Knights Templar of Connecticut in 1892. He is a member of the South Norwalk Club, the Norwalk Club, and the Norwalk Country Club. He is fond of outdoor life, particularly at the sea-shore, and of late years has become a devotee of physical culture.

Swartz’s Italianate house, built circa 1875, is at 16 Haviland Street in South Norwalk. It contains two apartments and is part of a 21-unit rental housing enclave called Haviland Gates.

Gilbert Sisson House (1819)

Gilbert Sisson House

Attention Readers: I will be at the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center tonight at 5:00 PM discussing and signing copies of my book, Vanished Downtown Hartford. Please come to this Nook Farm Book Talk if you are in the area! The house at 85 Main Street in North Stonington was built in 1819 (according to the sign on the house) or circa 1790 (according to the nomination for North Stonington Village Historic District). It was the home of Gilbert Sisson, a cabinetmaker and merchant. Born in 1769, Sisson married Desire Main in 1791. One of their sons, Charles Grandison Sisson (1807-1874), became a contractor and railroad president in New Jersey. Another, Noyes Sisson (1798-1872), was a cabinet maker and farmer in North Stonington.

John Mather House (1827)

John Mather House

Born in Westfield, Massachusetts in 1780, by age twenty-one John Mather was a merchant running a store in Hartford. In 1806 he started a glass works in Manchester (then still a part of East Hartford). It was soon destroyed in a fire, but the following year Mather was back in business, producing a variety of glass bottles. A hurricane in 1821 destroyed his glass factory and there is no evidence it was ever rebuilt. The location of the glass works was behind the current brick homes in the area of 109-119 Mather Street in Manchester. Mather’s home in Manchester, where he lived from 1827 to 1844, is located at 97 Mather Street, at the corner of Eastfield Street. Mather was a Mason and the local Lodge met in his house from 1829 to 1844. A painting of the house by Manchester artist Russell Cheney (1881-1945) is in the Masonic Temple on East Center Street in Manchester. A hearth with original paneling, taken from the Mather House, is also now located in the Masonic Temple with an inscription recognizing Mather’s contributions to Masonry.

George A. Bailey House (1844)

George A. Bailey House (1844)

The house at 26 Hurlbutt Road in Gales Ferry, Ledyard, was built in 1844 for George A. Bailey, a whaling captain, who owned it until 1861. After passing through other owners, it was purchased by Elizabeth Frost of New Jersey, whose family used it as a summer home. The Frosts modified the house, adding the current wraparound porch. In later decades, Nelson Parker could often be seen sitting on the porch. He bought the house in 1921 and his family owned it for 52 years. Active in local community affairs, Nelson Parker was known as an unofficial mayor of Ledyard. He had earlier been in business in Norwich, as described in Vol. III of A Modern History of New London County (1922):

Nelson Parker, the seventh child of Richard Samuel and Mary M. (Selsor) Parker, was reared and educated in Brooklyn, New York, receiving his formal training in the public schools. He then learned the paint manufacturing business with his father, and the two worked side by side in carrying on the business, until the elder Parker’s death. At that time Mrs. Parker became president of the company, and Mr. Nelson Parker secretary and treasurer, as well as general manager. This arrangement still continues, and the business is now one of the important industries of Norwich. The original name of Parker, Preston & Company is still retained. Besides being one of the foremost manufacturers of Norwich, Mr. Parker is interested in every phase of public life, and stands for the best in civic development and progress. In political choice he is a Republican. He is a member of Somerset Lodge, No. 34, Free and Accepted Masons, and is a member of the Chamber of Commerce. The family are members of the Central Baptist Church. On September 17, 1911, Nelson Parker married Mary H. Hurlbutt, of Gales Ferry, Connecticut, daughter of Henry W. and Lydia (Perkins) Hurlbutt. Mr. and Mrs. Parker are the parents of one daughter, Margaret H. Parker.

Charles H. Curtiss House (1910)

Curtiss House

The house at 331 Main Street in Bristol, built c. 1910, is listed as the Curtiss House in the nomination for the Federal Hill Historic District. Around 1918, Charles H. Curtiss, 331 Main Street, was secretary of Local No. 50, Order of Railway Conductors of America. Curtiss had earlier (c. 1910 to c. 1914) lived at 265 Main Street in Bristol. Charles H. Curtiss (1864-1922), a Democrat, served in the state house of representatives from 1919 to 1920.

Eliphalet Dyer House (1715)

Col. Eliphalet Dyer House

Col. Eliphalet Dyer (1721-1807) was one of Connecticut’s notable figures from the period of the Revolutionary War. Born in Windham, he graduated from Yale in 1740 and in 1746 became a lawyer and a Justice of the Peace. Dyer was a founder and leader of the Susquehannah Company, which focused on settling the Wyoming Valley in northeastern Pennsylvania. During the French and Indian War, Dyer was a Lt. Colonel in the militia as part of the expedition to capture Fort Crown Point from the French in 1755 and then, as a Colonel in 1758, he led a regiment in support of Amherst’s and Wolfe’s operations in Canada. Dyer served in the Connecticut legislature from 1742 to 1784 and in the Continental Congress from 1774 to 1783 (except for 1776 and 1779). Appointed to the Council of Safety in 1775, Dyer served until it was disbanded in 1783. Dyer’s daughter Amelia was married to Joseph Trumbull, who also served in the Continental Congress. A justice of Connecticut’s superior court, Eliphalet Dyer was Chief Justice from 1789 until 1793, when he retired to Windham. His home there was a colonial house (17 North Road) built circa 1705-1715.