The Everard Benjamin House (1838)

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Originally built on Orange Street in New Haven in 1838, the Everard Benjamin House was moved to the corner of Bradley and Lincoln Streets in the late 1860s. This classical Greek Revival building, designed by Ithiel Town, was set off from the street with a large front lawn in its original location, but the house now right off the sidewalk. Everard Benjamin was a silversmith, jeweler, and watchmaker, who succeeded his father, the silversmith Barzillai Benjamin. The house was later owned by Hobart B. Bigelow, who started by learning the machinist’s trade, becoming a leading manufacturer of boilers and heavy machinery. Bigelow later became mayor of New Haven in 1879 and served as governor of Connecticut from 1881 to 1883.

Gurdon Whiting House (1786)

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The land in West Hartford, where Gurdon Whiting would build a house around 1786, was originally part of a grant to Rev. Joseph Haynes, minister of First Church in Hartford and the son of John Haynes, first Governor of the Colony of Connecticut. Haynes’ daughter, Mary, inherited the property. She married Roswell Saltonstall, the son of Connecticut governor Gurdon Saltonstall. She later married Thomas Clap, President of Yale. Mary, who died in New Haven in 1769, left her land in the West Division of Hartford to her daughter, Mary Whiting, who deeded the land to her son, Gurdon Saltonstall Whiting in 1778. He built the Whiting House in the 1780s, at the time of his marriage. It remained in his family into the 1920s, when it was purchased by Philip Lawler, who had been mayor of West Hartford in 1915. The house, which has survived nearly intact, was in the Lawler family into the 1980s.

Capt. George Latimer House (1770)

The house of Capt. George Latimer is on Main Street in Wethersfield. It was built around 1770 by Samuel Talcott. Capt. Latimer owned the house in the nineteenth century and died by drowning in 1863. He was racing another ship on the Connecticut River back to Wethersfield at the time and had decided to take the shallower west channel of Wright’s Island. His boat ran aground and he was “walking” or kedging it (a method of hauling a ship in shallow water by laying a lighter kedge anchor attached to the ship by a rope and pulling the ship up to the anchor; the process is repeated until the ship is free from shallow water). Capt. Latimer was in a smaller boat, attempting to cast anchor and pull his ship, when an anchor chain caught his leg and pulled him under. At his funeral, his lifelike appearance made many believe he wasn’t really dead (and interestingly, it was said that no water had been found in his lungs).

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The Gardner Carpenter House (1793)

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In 1793, Gardner Carpenter, Norwich postmaster, purchased a house in Norwichtown which had been built around 1740 by André Richard, a wig-maker. Carpenter removed the earlier house and replaced it with the current brick one. Carpenter was a merchant and ship-owner who died in 1815, having lost most of his property to disasters at sea. The house was then sold to Joseph Carew Huntington in 1816. Soon after, he added a wood third story and a gambrel roof to the home. Joseph Huntington moved to New York in 1834 and the house was sold in 1841. Over the years, various one-story additions have been made to the rear of the house.

The Joshua Prior House (1766)

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In Old Houses of the Antient Town of Norwich (1895), Mary E. Perkins writes of a property along Washington Street:

Here Joshua Prior builds a house, perhaps about 1766, the time of his marriage to Sarah Hutchins of Killingly, and resides here for a time, but in 1789 he is living on the road near Elderkin’s bridge, and in 1790 he sells this house and land to Gideon Birchard, who also buys in 1795 a small piece of adjoining land (1 1/2 rods frontage) of his son Elisha, who has purchased the property on the north. Gideon Birchard (b. 1735), was the son of John and Jane (Hyde) Birchard and great-grandson of John Birchard, the first town clerk of Norwich. He married in 1757, Eunice Abel, daughter of Capt. Joshua and Jerusha (Frink) Abel, and had eight children. He was a carpenter by trade, and before 1799 moves to Whitestown, New York, and sells, in 1799, his house and land to Jeremiah Griffing. The house is still often called by old residents the Griffing house. In 1858, it is sold by the Griffing heirs to Daniel W. Coit, who sells it in 1871 to William Alfred Jones, who still resides here [William Alfred Jones died in 1900].

Henry S. Smith House (1855)

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As requested, the octagon house built for Henry S. Smith in 1855 is located at the dead end of Bevin Boulevard in East Hampton. Smith was the son of Nathaniel C. Smith, who represented his town six times in the Connecticut General Assembly and served as town clerk for twenty-five successive years. The house, which has a porch and a later ell, has been owned by the Clark family since around 1900.