The house at 66 Greenwood Avenue in Bethel is transitional between the architectural styles of the Greek Revival (note the columns on the front porch) and the Italianate (note the rooftop cupola with curved windows). The house was erected c. 1845 (before 1851) by Horace Hickok, a hat manufacturer and descendant of Capt. Ebenezer Hickok, who had given land for the Bethel Congregational Church‘s meetinghouse and burial ground in the eighteenth century.
On December 5, 1776, Capt. John Brainerd (1754-1820) married Hannah Hubbard and soon after erected a house at what is now the corner of Saybrook Road and High Street in Higganum. John’s father, Jabez Brainerd (c. 1713-1778), once lived in a house that stood at the rear of the property. As related in The Genealogy of the Brainerd-Brainard Family in America, 1649-1908, Vol. II (1908), by Lucy Abigail Brainard,
[John Brainerd] was a militia man in the Revolutionary War, and possibly was at White Plains, N.Y. He joined the Regiment Apr. 7, and was disc. May 19, 1777. He was Sergeant in Lieut. Smith’s Company. He was spoken of as Colonel. He was justice of the peace from 1795 to 1804, inclusive. He lived opposite the Higganum Church, which was then a part of Haddam. He was a farmer.
John and Hannah (Hubbard) Brainerd had eleven children. She died in 1795. John married his second wife, Jane Spencer, in 1800. A later resident of the house, from 1839 to 1883, was Selden Usher (1806-1883), a manufacturer who operated an oakum factory on the Higganum River. The house remained in the Usher family until 1948. The property has a historic barn and a privy.
Now used as an attorney’s office, the house at 152 Greenwood Avenue in Bethel was built c. 1845. From at least 1851 until 1867, it was the home of Andrew L. Benedict (born 1822), a New York merchant who also lived in Bethel, where he was a deacon of the Congregational Church and served as Justice of the Peace, Postmaster and on the Board of Education. He married Ruth Newell Allen in 1847. Their daughter, Ursula E. Benedict, was a member of the D.A.R. The house remained in the Benedict family until 1912, afterwards serving as the Bethel Public Library until 1924. It was later owned by William Hanna and then his wife, Elaine Hanna. Their son, Richard Hanna, was a Danbury attorney.
At 530 Foxon Road in North Branford is a one-story hip-roofed house with a grand Greek Revival entryway. The house’s distinctive design has been attributed to the famed architect Ithiel Town. In 1827, Deacon Israel Baldwin deeded forty-two acres of land to his son, Micah Baldwin, a New York merchant, who may have known the architect. In 1834, Micah gave the house, erected c. 1832, and the land to his nephew, George Baldwin, a farmer of modest means. The house has many secret hiding places and the basement may once have had a connecting tunnel, leading to the conclusion it may have been built specifically to serve as a station on the Underground Railroad. Micah and his brother Josiah Baldwin were abolitionists and Town may have been sympathetic to the anti-slavery cause. The house was owned by the Doody family from 1919 to 1948.
The house at 150 Barbertown Road in Canton was built in 1839 by Alson Barber (1792-1880) to replace an earlier house built for him at the time of his marriage in 1814 to Hannah Humphrey by his father, Reuben Barber. As described by lawyer Sylvester Barbour in his Reminiscences (1908):
The family of Alson Barber is the most remarkable I have known, and seems to me worthy of special mention. He was born May 6, 1792, and died April 5, 1880. He was brother to Sadosa (their father, Reuben, being the first person buried in the Center cemetery), and first cousin to my father, Henry Barbour. His wife, Hannah Humphrey (born December 4, 1796, died April 19, 1877), was a sister to the Rev. Heman Humphrey, D.D., [. . .] and sister to my mother, thus producing double relationship between the children of the two families. John Brown, the martyr, was first cousin to these sisters and brother. Alson and Hannah were married November 16, 1814, and the following named twelve children were born to them: Luther Humphrey, Maria, Nelson, Harriet, Sarah, Gaylord, John, Jennette, Lemuel, Mary, Hannah and Martha. All of these children lived to adult years, all were married, and excepting the first named, had children of their own. [. . .] All because members of the church in their youth and lived exemplarily. The parents lived together most happily more than 62 years, and celebrated their golden wedding and the sixtieth anniversary of their marriage. At the former celebration eleven of their twelve children were present, and at the latter nine were present. Thirty-five grandchildren were living at the time of the former celebration, and all the children were living at the sixty-second anniversary of the parents’ marriage.
Alson’s son, Gaylord, later ran the farm and erected barns on the property.
Little is known about Daniel Belden, who was an early (or perhaps the very first) occupant of the house at 1210 Mill Street in Berlin. Considered to be one of the finest Greek Revival-style houses in town, the Belden House was built c. 1855. Today, it appears to be part of the Mill Crossing Office Complex.
Construction of the house at 25 Vine Street in New Britain, which displays Victorian Gothic and Eastlake elements, has been dated to 1867, c. 1875, or, in A Walk Around Walnut Hill (1975), between 1885 and 1890. That same book indicates the house was built by Jacob J. and Charlotte Ritz (Jacob Ritz was a city councilman in 1882) and was purchased by George Tyler, an engineer, about 1900. The property includes an original carriage house.
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