In 1861, David Camp built his own house on the east side of Main Street in Durham (14-16 Main Street, old numbering; 37 Main Street, current numbering). Camp was a carpenter from a prominent family of carpenters in nineteenth-century Durham.
In 1817, Hanford Davenport married Hannah, daughter of Col. Enoch St. John of New Canaan. Between 1819 and 1821, Davenport built a house in New Canaan on land owned by his father-in-law. The Federal-style house, perhaps built on the site of an earlier colonial-era house, is particularly notable for the high quality of its Adamesque interior carving, made by Deacon Hiram Crissey. The house, located at the corner of Oenoke Ridge and Lambert Road, was added to over the years up until the 1920s. It was later owned by Dr. N. W. Green and is sometimes called the Davenport-Green House.
The Charles H. Russell Block, 374-384 Atlantic Street in Bridgeport, is a four-unit block of row houses built in 1882. Based on circumstantial evidence, the building has been attributed to the architectural firm of Palliser, Palliser & Company. The block is part of a planned development of working-class housing, innovatively designed by the Pallisers on land owned by P.T. Barnum.
Since 1935, the house at 135 North Broad Street in Milford has been home to Smith Funeral Home, founded in 1886 by George J. Smith. The wing on the west side is the earliest section of the house. The building was much expanded in 1853-1855 by John Fowler as an Italianate villa. Simon Lake bought the house in 1900 and further expanded it, building a laboratory behind it. Simon Lake was a mechanical engineer and naval architect who is credited with inventing the modern submarine.
The Italian villa-style house at 44 South Street in Litchfield was built by George M. Woodruff in 1855. Like his father, George C. Woodruff (1805-1885), who lived next door at 58 South Street, George M. Woodruff was a lawyer and politician, holding various town and state offices.
The house at 58 South Street in Litchfield was built in 1829 by Elihu Harrison (1797-1855), who ran a general store in the center of town from 1825 to 1836. The house was later owned by George C. Woodruff, a lawyer and a U.S. Representative (1861-1863). His son, George M. Woodruff, built a house next door in 1855. His grandson, James P. Woodruff, later lived in the 1829 house.
Charles Phelps Williams (1804-1879) was a wealthy shipowner and businessman in Stonington. A ship master by 1825, he was soon involved in seal fishery and, when the sealing industry declined, he turned to whaling. According to Hurd’s History of New London County (1882), Charles P. Williams
was one of the largest individual ship-owners engaged in that important pursuit. With its decadence he withdrew from active commercial life, and was one of the first corporators under the State laws of the Ocean Bank of Stonington, of which he was elected president, and whose immediate and continued prosperity was largely due to his admirable management. In 1856 he went to Europe with his family, and resigned the presidency, but on his return he was elected first director, a position which he retained in the reorganization of the bank as the First National.
Mr. Williams took an active part in the building of the Providence and Stonington Railroad, and was for many years president of that corporation.
His keen business foresight had at an early period in the development of the West convinced him of its importance and future greatness, and he became largely interested there. The management of his accumulating property occupied the later years of his life, and he withdrew entirely from active business. I In 1878 the severe strain of a life of intense mental activity culminated in failing health, and on Oct. 28, 1879, he died of a rupture of a blood-vessel in the brain. […]
One of the most marked features of his personal character was the thorough simplicity of his life. He never sought office of any kind. A man of distinguished and commanding presence, of most courteous and polished manners, he was averse to all ostentation and avoided public life. His integrity was spotless, and in the management of all the vast interests which he controlled, with the innumerable attendant possibilities of error, his reputation stood always above reproach. A man of generous impulse, his charities were as unostentatious as his life, and in his death the poor lost a true and a liberal friend, and the State an upright and valued citizen.
In 1840, his homestead on Water Street was moved to 39 Main Street, where it was remodeled in the Greek Revival style and enlarged with two side wings.
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