In the early eighteenth century, English colonists were encroaching on the land of the Wangunk tribe in the area of Indian Hill in Portland. In 1716 the Connecticut General Assembly permitted Giles Hall, a mariner and shipbuilder, to purchase Wangunk land at Indian Hill, which he and others soon developed as a shipbuilding center. When Hall sold the land in 1739, there was a house at what is now 643 Main Street, which he may have built c. 1717, the same year he built a road to the Connecticut River through the Wangunk reservation to transport shipbuilding materials. It is possible that the current front of the house was constructed when it was the home of shipbuilder John Abby in the 1820s, with the rear section from 1717 forming an ell that was destroyed by fire in the early twentieth century.
The history of the house at 584 Main Street in New Hartford is related in Sketches Of The People And Places Of New Hartford In The Past And Present (1883), by Henry R. Jones, where it is described as
a pretty two-story house, with a veranda on the south side and along the front of the ell part, the whole painted a pinkish tint. The house was built by Asa E. Perkins, a cabinet maker, who was well known in this town fifty years ago. He was a brother of Mrs Caleb C. Goodwin and Mrs Grove S. Marsh. Mr Perkins purchased the land of Richard B. Cowles in 1835, and probably built the house immediately after. He lived there a number of years, after which he removed to the hotel in this village, of which he was the proprietor a year or two, when he removed with his family to Michigan, where he died in 1882.
After Mr Perkins, the house was occupied by “Deacon” Wentworth for several years. L. Frank Fuller was its owner and occupant for some years; from his hands it became the property of Mr and Mrs Reed Anderson, an aged couple who resided there from the time of purchase in 1863 until their death. Mr Anderson died April 20, 1878, at the age of eighty-six, Mrs Anderson Oct. 14, 1880, aged eighty-three. Mr and Mrs Anderson came to this town from East Haddam. After the death of Mrs Anderson, the place was purchased by her sister, Mrs J. C. Smith, who immediately remodeled and enlarged it. The place was then used by the Cong’l society as a parsonage, and was occupied for several years by the pastor of that church, Rev Frederic H. Adams, the father of Dr. Walter B. Adams who married Anna L. Carter. Afterwards it was occupied by Wm. McAlpine, a tailor in town, and his family. In 1892 this place was purchased by Jacob Widmer, who was for many years a master machinist for the Greenwoods Company. Mr Widmer’s wife is the daughter of Mrs Anson J. Hawley of Town Hill. Mr and Mrs Widmer had three children, Frederick, who died in the South in 1894; Howard J. and Mary, twins, the latter the wife of Frank B. Munn, Esq., a lawyer practising in Winsted and New Hartford; Howard is a machinist, now working in Brooklyn, L. I. Mr Widmer carries on a jewelry and variety store in town.
Samuel T. Camp, a Middletown Grocer and banker, resided in a house he erected in 1865 at 180 College Street. In 1874, he erected a rental house on the adjacent lot at 11 Pearl Street. Its first tenant, from 1875 to 1890, was Caleb T. Winchester (1847-1920), an 1869 graduate of Wesleyan who became the college’s librarian (1869-1873) and then a professor of English Literature (1873-1920). In 1890 moved into a new house at 284 High Street. In 1906, the house at 11 Pearl Street was acquired by Edgar J. Wilcox and became his residence. Wilcox was president of the Connecticut Business College, which had locations in the Y.M.C.A. building in Middletown and in Hartford. The house remained in his family until 1943. A brick structure, the house is designed in a variety of the Italianate style sometimes referred to as a bracketed cottage. There is a nearly identical house at 154 Church Street that was most likely the work of the same builder.
Moses Camp (1803-1875), together with his brother Caleb J. Camp, owned a dry goods and grocery store, M. & C. J. Camp, in Winsted. The brothers also owned the Union Chair Company in Robertsville in the Town of Colebrook. The brothers’ other varied business interests included a gas company, an interest in the Sanford Hotel, and the Weed Sewing Machine Company in Hartford. Moses Camp, who also served as Town Clerk from 1846 to 1849, built his Greek Revival-style house at 682 Main Street in Winsted in c. 1840 (its also possible that he remodeled an earlier house on the site, built c. 1825). After he passed away, Camp’s widow resided in the house and rented rooms inside to boarders until her death in 1915. C. Wesley Winslow (1888-1967) bought the house in 1934. Winslow was a lawyer who served for decades as Town Clerk and Clerk of the Superior Court. Today the house is used as offices by the legal firm of Howd, Lavieri & Finch, LLP.
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