The Nathaniel Johnson House is a large saltbox house with a later Greek Revival doorway. Built in 1730, it is located at 58 Fair Street in Guilford. The leading Episcopalian in town, Johnson helped to establish Christ Church in Guilford. He was the brother of Samuel Johnson, an Anglican clergyman and the first president of King’s College (later Columbia) in New York.
At 38 North Elm Street in Wallingford is the Porter Cook House. As recorded in Porter Cook‘s diary (and quoted in the WPA report on the house):
In 1789, Octrober 3, Saturday my new house on Lower Town St. was raised. Samuel Doolittle of Pond Hill hued and fraimed the house, and Timothy Carrington and his son Lemuel clapboarded and shinggled the house. Col. Isaac Cook dighed the sellar wall, Zebilon Potter of this town near Tyler Cook’s East, North of this Town, made the brick. Trobridge and Jordan of New Haven put up my chimney, topt it of in eight days. (Up to Oct. 29, 1790, Bill Brout in and settled $17.00) Captain John Mansfield of Wallingford did the inside work, with them and Abel Mansfield, son to John Mansfield.
A farmer, Cook donated land for Union Academy in Wallingford in 1812.
Built around 1876, the Benjamin Lord House is a Stick Style/Queen Anne residence at 154 Pearl Street in Thompsonville, Enfield. Benjamin F. Lord was the proprietor of the Thompsonville Hotel, which was torn down in 1975. In recent years, the house was a bed and breakfast.
Born in Plymouth in 1826, George Langdon graduated from Yale in 1848. After experiencing a financial reverse as an industrial entrepreneur in Colchester after the Panic of 1857, he returned to Plymouth, where he owned a farm. He became the wealthiest man in town. He served as state representative in 1859 and as first selectman from 1859 to 1865. His Gothic Revival house was built at 688 Main Street in Plymouth circa 1865.
At 73 Main Street in Middletown is a house (pdf) that originally stood on William Street. It was built in 1747 for William Southmayd, who died before it was completed. His widow, Mehitable, was the house’s first occupant. It remained a residence until 1975 and was then slated for demolition. The house was saved in 1977, when it was moved to its current address and converted to serve as offices.
Frank T. Simpson helped lead Connecticut’s first civil rights organization. Born in Alabama in 1907, he moved to Hartford in 1929. Active in social work, in 1944 he became the first employee of the Connecticut Inter-Racial Commission, now the Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities. Simpson eventually became executive secretary and worked to end discrimination. In 1952, Dr. Simpson purchased a 1912-13 Tudor Revival house at 27 Keney Terrace in Hartford. He lived there until his death in 1974. The Waverly School, at 55 Waverly Street in Hartford, was renamed the Dr. Frank T. Simpson-Waverly School in his honor.
The house (pdf) at 304 Main Street in Farmington was built in 1710 and was originally the home of Simon Newell and his wife Mehitabel Bird Newell. In later years the house served as a home to farmers, a shoemaker and a wheelwright and, in the mid-twentieth century, as an antiques store. Today it is Keiler & Company, an advertizing agency. The house has been much added to over the years.
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