Capt. Samuel Mather House (1790)

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The house of Capt. Samuel Mather, on Lyme Street in Old Lyme, is an impressive gambrel-roofed structure built around 1784 or 1790. The width of the house’s clapboard siding is graduated, increasing with each course up to the building’s cornice. Capt. Mather, a descendant of Rev. Richard Mather of Dorchester, was a wealthy merchant involved in trade with the West Indies. He married Lois Griswold and their daughter, Mehitable Mather, married Capt. Thomas Sill. The house is now the Parsonage of the First Congregational Church of Old Lyme.

Ebenezer Hayden II House (1795)

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Ebenezer Hayden II (the first Ebenezer Hayden was a brother who was born earlier but had died) probably built his Georgian and Federal style house, located on Main Street in Essex, in stages in the late 1790s. The doorway, featuring a semi-circular fanlight window, may have been added around 1800. The Hayden House was the first home in the lower Connecticut River Valley to have a hipped roof, which may have been constructed by the noted builder Thomas Hayden of Windsor and shipped down the river in sections to be placed on the building. The Ebenezer Hayden House is the third home up from the river and one of many homes built by members of the Hayden family in the vicinity of the Hayden Shipyard. Ebenezer II married Sarah, the daughter of Grover L’Hommideau, who had created the town’s first ropewalk.

Jared Pratt House (1803)

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Jared Pratt built a house on Main Street in Essex around 1803, after his marriage to Polly Bull. In 1854, Captain Isaiah Pratt purchased the home from his father, although his parents were allowed life use. Isaiah, who later altered the house in the Second Empire style, sold it to his sister, Mary Pratt, in 1868. In 1922, the main section of the building was moved from Main Street to what is now called Pratt Street to make room for the construction of a new town office building (now the Post Office).

E.G. Robbins House (1790)

The E.G. Robbins House, on Main Street in Wethersfield, was originally a gambrel-roofed structure, built by Elijah Wright around 1790. Wright served as a militia captain in the Revolutionary War. The house was extensively remodeled in the Italianate style around 1850, probably by the seed company owner, Silas W. Robbins. By 1869, the house was owned by Robbins’s brother, Edward Griswold Robbins. It was later the Pyquaug Inn and now the building houses a hair salon The Charles restaurant.

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The Jacob and Abigail Strong House (1698)

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With this post, Historic Buildings of Connecticut celebrates its second anniversary! That’s two years of daily entries of historic buildings! There are many more to do (that’s an understatement!), so please keep reading!!! For our Second Birthday Post, the featured building is the Jacob and Abigail Strong House (also known in the past as the David Strong House) in East Windsor Hill (South Windsor). This is an early “First Period” or Post-Medieval English home, built in 1698. Originally the home of Jacob Strong and his wife, Abigail Bissell, the house is now the residence of Edward Sunderland of Sunderland Period Homes.

The Capt. Ira Shailer House (1815)

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Capt. Ira Shailer constructed his house on Bridge Road in Haddam around 1815, two years after acquiring the property. He had married Jerusha Arnold in 1808 and the couple would have a family of ten surviving children. Their son, Alexander Shailer, who was born in the house in 1827, served as a general in the Civil War. The Shailer family eventually moved to New York in 1835 and the house was purchased by Benoni Southworth, a ship captain who had married Ira Shailer’s cousin, Mary Ann Shailer.