Heman Brainard House (1794)

According to Portrait of a River Town: The History and Architecture of Haddam, Connecticut (1984), by Janice P. Cunningham and Elizabeth Ann Warner, the house at 366 Saybrook Road in the Higganum section of Haddam was erected by Heman Brainerd (1754-1803) on land deeded to him in 1784 by his father, Phineas Brainerd (1720-1803), one of the original settlers of Higganum. It was described as a “new Dwelling House” in a 1794 deed, although town acessor’s records date the house to 1729. After the death of Heman’s widow, the house was purchased by James Gladwin and remained in his family for the rest of the nineteenth century. Dr. William H. Tremaine (1815-1883), a noted physician, lived in the house from 1850 to 1857, before he moved to Hartford. The house’s original stairway and chimney, destroyed by fire in the nineteenth century, were rebuilt by its later twentieth century owners.

John Wetmore House (1780)

In 1762, John Wetmore of Middlefield married his first cousin, Lois (a not uncommon practice among eighteenth-century farming families seeking to keep holdings within a larger family network). Circa 1780, the couple erected a house on land in Middlefield, owned by John’s father, Deacon Caleb Wetmore (1706-1788) who, unusually for the time, deeded the land to his niece and daughter-in-law Lois in 1786. The couple later deeded the property to their son, Captain John Wetmore, but during the 1790s, when Connecticut farmers were facing difficult times, he moved to Litchfield, where he died in 1847, and his brothers, Josiah, Azariah and James moved to Ohio. In eleven years the property had five different owners, but was them purchased by Jacob Miller and remained in his family until the early twentieth century. Located at 18 Maple Street, the Wetmore-Miller House has an early-twentieth century Colonial Revival entry portico.

Margaret Hills House (1871)

The house at 59 Burnside Avenue has been much altered over the years since it was first erected in about 1871. In its early years the house was successively owned by three women. It was built by Margaret Stanley Hills (1828-1892), who had acquired the land in 1865. She later sold the house to Martha W. Olmsted, but it eventually was passed to Margaret and her husband Edwin Hills’ daughter, Eliza Stanley Hills Kilbourne, who lived in South Windsor. She sold the property to Dr. Thomas O’Connell in 1898. He was a prominent physician and an elementary school in East Hartford is named for him.

Thomas Trowbridge House (1874)

The house at 158 North Street in Litchfield was built in 1874 or 1876 for Thomas Trowbridge. This was likely Thomas Rutherford Trowbridge, Jr. (1839-1898), a New Haven shipping merchant who traded with the West Indies. Trowbridge had his summer home in Litchfield, where he died in 1898. Later owners of the house included Mrs. Blanche Bucklin (in 1920) and Franklin Coe, who remodeled the house in 1940 from its original Victorian appearance to the Colonial Revival style.

Elizabeth and Frederick Wiggin House (1871)

The house at 145 South Street in Litchfield was built about 1871 as a summer home for Elizabeth and Frederick Wiggin. It remained in the Wiggin family until 1978, its residents including Charlotte Wiggin and Lewis Wiggin. Among the house’s later owners were Hope and Benjamin Gaillard. Designed by architect Florentine Pelletier of New York, the house originally had a wrap-around veranda that was removed in the 1940s by Frederick Wiggin’s grandson.