Built around 1785 by Moses Downs, the house at 639 South Britain Road in Southbury served for many years as the parsonage of the South Britain Congregational Church. The house has a Greek Revival door surround, added in the 1830s or 1840s.
Happy Independence Day! The Nathan Lester House & Farm Tool Museum on Long Cove and Vinegar Hill roads (153 Vinegar Hill Road) in Gales Ferry is owned by the town of Ledyard. A typical Connecticut farmhouse of the period, the Lester House was built in 1793 by Nathan Lester, whose father, Peter Lester, had originally purchased the farm. The house is also known as the Larrabee House because Hannah Gallup Lester, Nathan’s only child, married Captain Adam Larrabee. The house remained in the family until 1908, when it was bought by Dr. and Mrs. Charles B. Graves. In 1965, as a memorial to her parents, Elizabeth Graves Hill gave the house and 11 acres of land to the Town of Ledyard. This property included the Ledyard Oak, which was the second largest white oak in the country and appears on the Ledyard town seal. The tree was officially declared dead in June, 1969. A new white oak was planted near the original Ledyard Oak in 2009.
In 1796, Daniel Copp (1770-1822) married Sarah (Sally) Allyn and purchased land in Gales Ferry in Ledyard. Soon thereafter he built a house (64 Hurlbutt Road) and ran a merchant shop in a building next door. He sold the property in 1802 and later moved to Florida. He died in St. Augustine during a yellow fever epidemic in January 1822. His Gales Ferry property was bought by Daniel Williams in 1827 and remained in his family for almost a century. It is said that James McNeil Whistler visited the house and admired its large central hearth.
The house at 37 Main Street in North Stonington was built in 1791 by Noah Grant Jr. (1747-1801), a distant relative of Ulysses S. Grant. The rear ell was originally a separate building that was used as a general store by Hosea and Ephraim Wheeler in the late eighteenth century. The house was altered in the first half of the 1860s, when the windows were enlarged and the bay window was added. For a brief time in the early 1960s, the house was owned by the North Stonington Congregational Church and was used as a parish and Sunday school.
South Britain is a village in Southbury. At 636 South Britain Road is a house that once served as the village post office. As related in South Britain Sketches and Records (1898) by W.C. Sharpe:
Anson Bray was a blacksmith by trade but kept a hotel in South Britain for many years, and for forty years was postmaster.
He first married Betsey Plant of Rochester, NY. His second wife was Ellen Pierce, of South Britain.
Among the pillars of those days was Anson Bray, from time immemorial the village postmaster. His house, now occupied by Mr-and Mrs. James Adams, was probably more widely known and more frequently visited than any other in the village.
In addition,
Judson Bray, son of Stephen B. and Hannah Bray, removed to Bridgeport, but later returned to South Britain and with his brother Anson started the saddletree business in the old shop just back of Anson Bray’s house, and continued the business there for some years.
The Anson Bray House was built in 1835. It has a recessed wing that was built earlier.
Built circa 1800-1810, the Miss H. E. & S. E. Canfield House is located at 524 South Britain Road in Southbury. A Federal-style house, its pedimented entrance porch is a later Greek Revival addition.
Daniel Hubbard (1697-1751) of Guilford married Thankful Stone in 1728. After her death he married his second wife, Diana Ward, in 1730. Their son, Bela Hubbard, graduated from Yale and became an Episcopalian minister, serving at Christ Church in Guilford and later at Trinity Church in New Haven. Their daughter, Diana Hubbard, married Andrew Ward. Their daughter, Roxana Ward, married Eli Foote. Their daughter, Roxana Foote, married Lyman Beecher and was the mother of Harriet Beecher Stowe and Henry Ward Beecher. Daniel Hubbard‘s house, at 51-53 Broad Street in Guilford, was built in 1717. Unusually large for its time, the house has a large wing that was added in 1872.
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