Hermon Chapin III was the grandson of Hermon Edward Chapin, the successful Pine Meadow, New Hartford tool manufacturer. Hermon Chapin III’s Colonial Revival house, built in 1908, is on Main Street in New Hartford, across from Chapin Park (Pine Meadow Green). The house attracted much praise in town when it was built.
In June of 1781, the army of the French general, the comte de Rochambeau, on its way to join George Washington and fight in the Battle of Yorktown, camped at what was later called Rose Farm in Bolton. Between June 21 and 25, 1781, four regiments of the French soldiers spent one night each at the camp, which was the fifth French army encampment of their journey from Newport, Rhode Island to Yorktown, Virginia. The farm was part of the land originally owned by the town’s first minister, Reverend Thomas White and at the time of the Revolutionary War, the property, called the Minister’s Farm, was owned by Reverend George Colton, who was Bolton’s minister from 1764 to 1817. The farm still has numerous stone walls, built by early settlers who initially cleared the land. Many of these walls were noted on a map made by Rochambeau’s engineer. The minister’s house, originally built in 1725 by Rev. White and where Rev. Colton entertained Rochambeau in 1781, has been significantly altered. Once believed to have been replaced by a new Greek Revival-style house, built around 1840 by Reverend James Ely, it is now thought that the core of the later house is the original colonial structure, much altered and added to in later years . The farm was owned by the Rose family in the twentieth century. It was saved from the building of an expressway in 1994 and in 2000, after a campaign to save the land from development, it was purchased by the town of Bolton and is now the Bolton Heritage Farm.
The Edwin McNeil House, on North Street in Litchfield, is a good example of an older home which was transformed into a Colonial Revival edifice in keeping with the overall style of the neighborhood. The house was originally a vernacular home, built by Edwin McNeil in 1867. McNeil, a civil engineer who had served as a major in the Civil War, was instrumental in bringing the Shepaug Railroad to Litchfield in 1872. The railroad linked Litchfield to New York and spurred the town’s development as a summer resort. McNeil’s house became the Litchfield Inn in the early twentieth century and was transformed into a Colonial Revival estate after it was purchased by a wealthy Waterbury industrialist in 1911. It was renovated again in the 1990s.
The Stoner Mansion is a Tudor Revival house, on Stoner Drive, off Mountain Road in West Hartford. It was completed in 1928 for Louis Stoner, a manufacturer who became wealthy from the Jacobs Chuck company, which produces holding/clamping devices for stationary equipment and portable power tools. The family hosted famous parties at the mansion, which was situated on an extensive estate on a hillside with views of Hartford and a private golf course. Later, the family faced financial hardship and Louis Stoner committed suicide. In the 1950s, his widow, Clara Stoner, began to sell off lots of the property, with early houses being built down Stoner Drive, near Mountain Road. In the 1970s, homes were being built closer to the mansion itself. The Stoners eventually left the house and their furniture was put on auction in 1973. The mansion then had a number of other occupants: there’s a blog post by one former resident whose parents bought the house in 1974. In the 1980s, the house was owned by a man who was later arrested for tax evasion. Left empty for a decade by later owners who never moved in, the house deteriorated and had to be extensively restored by its most recent owners, one of whom owns an interior design company which, for a time, has been based in the mansion. The house will soon have new owners.
The house of Moses Loomis, Jr. was built around 1725 on old Main Street in East Windsor Hill (now South Windsor). Moses Loomis, Jr., the son of Moses Loomis and Joanna Gibbs, was born in East Windsor Hill in 1696. His house in East Windsor Hill was built the year he married his first wife, Rebecca, in Harwinton. She died the following year and, in 1729, he married Elizabeth Bidwell. Moses and Elizabeth both died in 1761. He is buried in Edwards Cemetery in South Windsor
The Oliver White Tavern was built around 1741-1743 on East Street (now Brandy Street) in Bolton. Oliver White sold the house after it was built, although it continued to bear his name when it became a Tavern, between 1753 and 1764. During the Revolutionary War, Capt. Joel White owned the Tavern, which was situated near the farm where General Rochambeau’s French troops camped in June of 1781, during their march to the Battle of Yorktown. Some of Rochambeau’s officers stayed at the Tavern, while the general himself went to the Daniel White Tavern, nearby in Andover. The Oliver White Tavern continued in operation until around 1790.
Daniel White’s Tavern, on Hutchinson Road in Andover, was built as a house in 1722 and was opened as a tavern in 1773 by Daniel White, who was a Coventry selectman and an army captain during the Revolutionary War. Known as White’s Tavern at the Sign of the Black Horse, the house had two inner walls on the second floor which could be swung upwards to create an enlarged ballroom. The Tavern was a frequent stopping place for the comte de Rochambeau during the Revolutionary War. He stopped there in May 1781, on his way to and from his conference with Washington in Wethersfield. Later, in June of that year, when his army camped nearby in Bolton, on its way from Rhode Island to fight in the Battle of Yorktown (and again in November, when the army was returning), Rochambeau and several of his officers were guests at the Tavern. Rochambeau was there again in 1782, when he traveled to Newburgh, New York, for his final meeting with Washington.
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