53 Main Street, Stonington Borough (1787)

Built in 1787, the house at 53 Main Street in Stonington Borough was shared by two brothers, Joseph and Benjamin Eells, whose wives drew a line down the kitchen floor, dividing it in two. The house was later home to the writers Grace Zaring Stone (d. 1991) and her daughter, Eleanor Perenyi (d. 2009). Stone, who was the great-great-granddaughter of Robert Owen, the British social reformer and socialist, wrote novels, including The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1932), Escape (1939) and Winter Meeting (1946) (all three of which were made into films). She began using the pseudonym Ethel Vance for her anti-Nazi novel Escape, because her daughter, who had married the Hungarian Baron Zsigmond Perenyi, was at the time living at her husband’s castle in Ruthenia, then controlled by German-occupied Czechoslovakia (now in Ukraine). Eleanor Perenyi later created an extensive private garden at the house in Stonington and wrote a classic book on gardening, called Green Thoughts: A Writer in the Garden (1981).

Bronson B. Tuttle House (1881)

In 1858, John Howard Whittemore formed a company with Bronson B. Tuttle to produce malleable iron hardware, a company that was eventually known as Naugatuck Malleable Iron. Tuttle’s brick house, unlike that of his partner Whittemore, survives today in Naugatuck Center, at the north end of Church Street. Built in 1879 to 1881, the brick and brownstone residence, designed by Robert Wakeman Hill of Warterbuy, is Queen Anne in style, elaborated with elements of other styles. The gable ends and tower dormers are decorated with a quarter sunburst design. There is quatre-foil-pierced terra-cotta cresting along the roof line. The original wraparound porch was later removed. The house remained in the Tuttle family until 1935, when it was given to the Borough of Naugatuck, the house has served as a school and is now the offices of the Naugatuck Board of Education.

Martin Barber House (1835)

One of a number of brick houses on Windsor Avenue in Windsor, the Martin Barber House at no. 992 was built around 1835. Barber bought the land, probably with the already completed house, from Margaret Roberts in 1839. Martin Barber ran a brick yard, with his brother Edward, located just south of his house. The house later passed to Barber’s wife, Eliza, in 1877 and then to his daughter, Caroline Barber Adams.

Congregational Church Parsonage, Cheshire (1913)

On the site where the Parsonage of the First Congregational Church of Cheshire now stands, Dr. Thomas T. Cornwall once had a house, built in 1796. It later served as the office of another doctor, then as a tavern and store. Levi Munson, who began as a clerk at the store, purchased the property and ran it as a hotel for the next three decades. Munson’s son-in-law, Franklyn Wallace, then took over and operated the establishment until it burned down in 1892. Trolley barns then occupied the site until the church built the colonial revival-style parsonage in 1912-1913. No longer used as a residence for ministers, the church has recently been considering how to best make use of the property.

The David Welch House (1756)

Milton, a village in Litchfield, was settled in the mid-eighteenth century. David Welch arrived in Milton from New Milford in 1753 and established a puddling furnace for refining the pig iron brought from Salisbury. The furnace was on Shear Shop Road, located behind the saltbox house, at Potash and Milton Roads, which Welch built in 1756. Welch, who also bought and sold the iron ore mined in northwestern Connecticut, later constructed an addition, for use as a store, on the eastern end of his house. Welch did business with Ethan Allen, the Revolutionary War hero, and later served as a major in the War himself. Welch moved into another house in Milton in 1784, where he died in 1815. His original house was later owned by William Bissell, from 1860 to 1902. Bissell was a farmer, house painter and captain in the Civil War. The house was also used for many years as a parish house by the neighboring Trinity Episcopal Church. There is a pdf document available with additional pictures of the house’s exterior and interior.