Oldfield (1818)

Between 1818 and 1822, John Moseley built a house on what is now Main Street North in Southbury. The lumber for the house was said to have been personally selected by Moseley in Maine. After Moseley died in 1876 at the age of one hundred, the house passed through several owners, including Albert and Ruth Aston, who donated the land that became the First Church Green. In 1902, a building across the street, which had once served as an inn or store, was moved and attached to the rear of the house and raised from one to two stories. The house’s interior was also featured in photographs taken by Wallace Nutting during the period when he lived in Southbury. Known as Oldfield, the house has been a bed & breakfast, called Cornucopia at Oldfield, since 1997.

Southworth-Williams House (1802)

Alpheus S. Williams was a Union general in the Civil War. He was born in 1810 in Saybrook (now called Deep River). [see General Alpheus S. Williams (1911), by Joseph Greusel and Memorial Addresses on the Life and Character of Alpheus S. Williams (1880)] In 1817, his father, Ezra Williams, bought the house at the corner of Main and Elm Streets in Deep River. It had been built in 1802 by Jabez Southworth, Sr. The year before, Ezra Williams had partnered with George Read, Phineas Pratt and others to form Ezra Williams & Company to manufacture ivory combs.

Nuttinghame (1740)

Wallace Nutting (1861 – 1941), a former minister, became a leading antiquarian, entrepreneur and a major figure of the Colonial Revival movement in the early twentieth century. He authored books, reproduced antique American furniture and opened colonial houses as museums, including the Webb House in Wethersfield. He is most well-known for his photographs of country landscapes and the interiors of colonial houses, which were hand colored by women who worked for him and sold through a catalog. In 1906, Nutting had moved to a farm in Southbury, where he soon established a studio in a new barn he built on the property. He restored the old farmhouse, built in the 1740s, and named it “Nuttinghame.” Quite a few Nutting pictures feature Nuttinghame and the landscape that surrounds it. One notable image is titled “Nuttinghame Blossoms.” A particular parlor in the house was featured in many Nutting pictures, including: “A Bit Of Sewing,” “A Sip Of Tea” and “An Afternoon Tea.”

As Nutting‘s business prospered, he decided to move his operation to Framingham, Massachusetts in 1912, where he bought an Italianate house he called “Nuttingholm.” The Framingham house was later demolished, but his earlier house in Southbury still exists. In 1953, the farm was purchased by the comedic pianist Victor Borge. In the mid-1960s, Borge sold the property to a development company, which built a retirement community called Heritage Village. The Nutting/Borge house is now called the Meeting House and has executive offices, meeting rooms and a kitchen for use by community residents.

William Wadsworth House (1848)

Located on an elevated lot, at the intersection of Madison and Higganum Roads in Durham, is the William Wadsworth House, built in 1848. Wadsworth was a farmer and a descendant of Col. James Wadsworth, one of the town’s most prominent citizens. William Wadsworth, who also served as town clerk and Justice of the Peace, sold the property to Angeline L. Scranton, although he continued to live in the house until his death in 1870. Scranton married Orrin Camp, of Oquawka, Illinois, in 1873 and sold the house before moving west. The fine Greek Revival-style house has been vacant and in a deteriorating condition for many years.

The Dr. S. Waldo Hart House (1870)

Dr. Samuel Waldo Hart was a leading citizen of New Britain in the nineteenth century. He was the son and namesake of New Britain’s first physician and, according to his biography in the Official Souvenir and Program of the Dedication of the Soldiers’ Monument (1900) [the construction of which he supported], “His father’s practice, which was large in this city, was carried on to its zenith under him.” Furthermore, “He spent much time in travel in Europe and the West and in Central America, where his cultured mind received a keen enjoyment of varied observations. His letters from abroad were entertaining inasmuch as he was a master of English descriptive style.” He also served as the city’s second mayor, from 1872 to 1876. Perhaps built in the 1870s, Dr. Hart‘s house (which also held his office) is on South High Street.