At 230 Killingworth Road in Higganum in Haddam is a Federal-style house constructed in 1815. It was the home of Selden Skinner, who may have been involved with his father and uncle in operating a gristmill nearby. When he died in 1870, the house passed to his daughter, Frances Halsey.
The section on Tolland in A History of New England, Vol. I, (1880), explains that:
The business of tanning and currying leather had been carried on near the village for many years before 1840. About that time Mr. Moses Underwood purchased this property and continued the business successfully for several years, when he and one of his sons [Henry Underwood] engaged in manufacturing belts in connection with the business of tanning leather. The Underwood Belting Company, formed in 1875, have increased this business and have erected more commodious and extensive buildings, furnished with expensive machinery. This is the only manufacturing business now carried on in Tolland.
Frank Underwood, son of Henry, built his house at 25 Tolland Green in Tolland in 1873. Five years later, he constructed a factory behind his house, from which steam was piped to heat his residence. The factory burned in 1897, but the house survives and is notable for being the work of the architects Palliser and Palliser. The design of the house was featured in Palliser’s Model Homes (1883), where the house is described as follows:
This country residence embraces many novel and good features of exterior variety and interior compactness and convenience. The workmanship and materials throughout have been of the best description, the materials being purchased by the owner and the work done by the day, and no pains have been spared to make it first-class in every respect.
The interior arrangement is very complete and unique, the Hall being finished in Oak, Parlor in Maple, Library and Dining-room in Ash, all the fire-places having hard wood mantels of handsome design. The conservatory is a pleasing feature of the first floor plan, and is accessible from the Dining-room through a casement window; access is also obtained in a like manner to porch in rear of Dining-room. A clothes-shute is arranged from second floor to soiled clothes-closet in Laundry, an arrangement that is appreciated by every housekeeper.
Stained glass is used in all the windows above transoms. Roofs are slated and ridges covered with red terra-cotta cresting. The interior wood-work is filled with Crockett’s Preservative. The heating is done by indirect radiation, steam being brought into cellar from the Underwood Belting Company’s Factory. Cost about $4,500.00.
Dating to about 1850, the Isaac B. Bradley House, at 2 Unionville Avenue, is one of Plainville’s best preserved nineteenth-century farmhouses. Isaac B. Bradley was born in Northfield in Litchfield in 1810 and died in 1885. In 1835, he married Martha Judd Cowles of Farmington, who died in 1847.
The Marks-Brownson House in Huntington (part of Shelton) was built between 1820 and 1825 for Hezekiah Marks, a merchant who served in the Connecticut General Assembly in 1828 and 1830. After his death in 1835, at the age of 54, the house was sold to the Bennett family, who sold it in 1866 to Henry Israel Brownson. The house eventually passed to his son, Harry Booth Brownson, who married Gertrude Buckingham in 1904. Making their living as farmers, the couple lived in the house for over sixty years. In 1960, the Brownson Country Club opened on land gifted for one dollar by the Brownsons, who wanted to save it from development. The Shelton Historical Society acquired the Brownson House in 1971, also for a dollar, and moved it from its original location, at the corner of Old Shelton Road and Shelton Avenue, to the corner of Ripton and Cloverdale Roads, where today it is open to the public as part of the Shelton History Center. The house is presented as it would have been during the early years of the marriage of Harry and Gertrude Brownson.
The Lemuel Wellman House, at 100 East Main Street in Clinton, was built in 1792. It originally had only one story and no front porch. Lemuel Wellman married Elizabeth Buell in 1792 and, after her death in 1801, he married Julia Merrels. When his sons, Elias and Henry, married, the house was raised and expanded into a two-family dwelling for them.
At 26 West Hill Drive, in the West Hill Historic District in West Hartford, is a Colonial/Tudor Revival house, built in 1924 and designed by Smith & Bassette for Frank E. Wolcott. His manufacturing company produced the Silex coffee pot. A vacuum brewer, the Silex coffee pot, utilizing heatproof Pyrex glass, was first produced in 1915. The rights to its design, which originated in Europe, had been acquired in 1909 by two sisters, Mrs. Ann Bridges and Mrs. Sutton, of Salem, Massachusetts. Wolcott’s company was later renamed the Silex Company. Its first patent for a coffee pot was assigned to Hazel M. Bridges in 1926. Frank E. Wolcott filed additional patents in the 1930s.
The Fenner-Matthewson Mansion, in Plainfield‘s Central Village (pdf), has been described as one of the most outstanding Italian Villa-style houses in Connecticut. It was built around 1855 by Arnold Fenner at 40 Main Street, on what became known as Central Village’s “Manufacturers’ Row.” Born in Rhode Island, Fenner settled in Central Village about 1825 and in 1827 he purchased a major interest in the Central Manufacturing Company‘s cotton-spinning mill. Fenner and Allen Harris, a pioneering manufacturer in Central Village, constructed a second brick upper mill in 1828. Harris sold his interest in the company to Fenner in 1840. Fenner later replaced the company’s original lower mill with a brick one in 1845. After his death in 1871, Fenner’s daughter, Helen Walcott Fenner, lived in the house with her husband, Philip Matthewson, who was proprietor of a general store, which he sold in 1872 to live in retirement.
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