The north section of the Wyllys-Orton House, which was most likely separated from the rest of the 1659 home in the 1790s, is adjacent to the south section, on Main Street in Farmington. It was later enlarged. Another Connecticut house that was divided into two (south and north sections) is the John Chester Tavern in Wethersfield.
The Wyllys-Orton House, on Main Street in Farmington, was divided in half, probably in the 1790s. It was originally built around 1659 by Thomas Orton, on land that had once been owned by Samuel Wyllys, son of the early Connecticut Governor George Wyllys. The house had various later owners who made numerous changes, the most significant being the removal of the original house’s north section to an adjacent lot on Main Street. This northern section was later enlarged. There are a number of stories as to why the house was divided. According to one, a mother and her daughter-in-law both lived in the home but each wanted to rule in her own kitchen, so the house was split in two.
Designed by Ehrick K. Rossiter, the 1904 Seymour Cunningham House, on South Street in Litchfield, is an example of the types of high style Colonial Revival houses that were built as summer homes for the wealthy in the early twentieth century. Seymour Cunningham was the son of William Orr Cunningham, a wealthy papermill owner from New York State. Seymour married in 1892 and it is possible that he built the house the following year, 1893. That is the date given in a biographical sketch of Cunningham in the Genealogical and Family History of the State of Connecticut, Vol. II (1911):
Seymour, son of William Orr Cunningham, was born in Troy, New York, September 13, 1863. He attended the Troy Academy. Later he entered the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and graduated with the degree of civil engineer in 1884. He became interested in the oil business in Pennsylvania and Ohio. In 1887 the old home at Troy, New York, was sold and he brought his mother to Washington, D. C., and built a residence at No. 1719 K street, where he still maintains his winter residence. His Litchfield home, “Forked Chimney,” was built in 1893, on South street, near the site of the old Parmelee house. In politics he is a Republican. In religion he is an Episcopalian. He married, June 6, 1892, Stephanie Whitney, of Oakland, California, born October 22, 1869, daughter of Hon. George E. Whitney, lawyer and state senator of California, and Mary (Van Swaringen) Whitney, of Louisville, Kentucky. Mrs. Cunningham was named Stephanie in honor of her uncle, Justice Stephen J. Field, of the United States supreme court. Children of Mr. and Mrs. Cunningham: Cecil, born March 8, 1893; Macklin, February 21, 1894; Jane Chester, February 27, 1896; Pamela, May 5, 1906. The three oldest were born in Washington, D. C., the youngest in Litchfield, Connecticut.
The Oliver Smith House, on Main Street in Stonington Borough, perhaps the oldest surviving house in town, was built in the early 1760s (after 1761). Smith, a merchant and one of the defenders of Stonington during the American Revolution, was the last owner of Venture Smith. Born under the name Broteer Furro, Venture was an African prince enslaved at the age of six and brought to America. Eventually buying his freedom when in his 30s from Oliver Smith, Venture went on to purchase land and became prosperous by farming, fishing and shipping goods. In the 1790s, Venture Smith dictated his life story to a schoolteacher named Elisha Niles. This autobiography was then published as A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Venture, a Native of Africa but Resident above Sixty Years in the United States of America, Related by Himself (1798).
The homestead of James Stokes is on Elm Street in Ansonia. The current house, completed around 1830, either replaced or incorporated an earlier one on the site, built in 1778. Stokes married Caroline Phelps, the daughter of Anson Greene Phelps, who founded Ansonia. Born in Simsbury, Phelps had become a successful businessman and manufacturer in New York. In the 1830s, Phelps joined with Sheldon Smith to found a manufacturing village in Derby called Birmingham (now the City of Derby). Facing obstacles in his attempts to expand Birmingham to the north in the 1840s, Phelps founded a new manufacturing settlement on the east bank of the Naugatuck River, in the older part of Derby which was named “Ansonia” after its founder. Phelps established a copper wire mill in 1845, which merged with Birmingham Copper Mills in 1854 and later became Ansonia Copper & Brass. Ansonia separated from Derby in 1889, later incorporating as a city in 1893. Anson G. Phelps was active in the Congregational Church and contributed to many philanthropic causes. His daughter, Caroline Phelps Stokes, and son-in-law, James Stokes, used their Ansonia house as a summer home and Anson Phelps often visited. Stokes’s son, Anson Phelps Stokes I, was a merchant, banker and multimillionaire; his grandson, Anson Phelps Stokes II, was a philanthropist; his great-grandson, Anson Phelps Stokes III, was an Episcopal Bishop. Another son of James Phelps was William Earl Dodge Stokes, a multimillionaire who developed much of New York’s Upper West Side and built a famous hotel called the Ansonia on Broadway. James Phelps’s daughter, Caroline Phelps Stokes, a philanthropist whose will established the Phelps-Stokes Fund, donated a library to the City of Ansonia.
As resident physician in the New York City Almshouse, Dr. John Ireland Howe observed how English residents laboriously made pins by hand. In 1831, Dr. Howe invented a pin-making machine and founded the Howe Manufacturing company in New York in 1835 to produce pins. In 1838, he moved the company to Birmingham, a section of Derby which would later become the City of Derby. The Howe Pin Company grew as Howe perfected his methods with additional patented inventions. In 1910, Howe‘s son donated his original Pin Machine to the Smithsonian. Howe’s stone house, constructed in 1845 on Caroline Street in Derby, was perhaps built by Lucius Hubbell, who constructed other stone houses in Derby and Shelton. The house, now owned by the Derby Historical Society, will eventually house the Lower Naugatuck Valley Industrial Heritage Center.
Located across from the Old Episcopal Burying Ground, on Elm Street in Ansonia, is the house where General David Humphreys was born in 1752. The house was built in 1698 to be the home of the new Congregational Minister of the Town of Derby (Ansonia was then part of Derby). It was first occupied by the Reverend John James, who sold the house in 1706 to the Reverend Joseph Moss. In 1735, the Reverend Daniel Humphreys bought the house from Joseph Moss’s widow, Abigail Moss. At some point in the 1730s, the house was enlarged to roughly its current size. Humphreys was a Congregational minister, but lived across the street from Derby’s Episcopal church, with its cemetery. Later, when Derby’s second Episcopal Church was built down the street to replace the original smaller building, the old church building was moved across Elm Street and attached to the Humphreys House for use as a summer kitchen. Rev. Humphreys died in 1787. His son, David Humphreys, never owned the house, but visited it as his family’s ancestral homestead. During the Revolutionary War, David Humphreys served as an aide-de-camp and close adviser to George Washington and, after the Battle of Yorktown, he was honored by receiving the surrendered British standards and presenting them to Congress. After the War, Humphreys served as a diplomat in Europe and General Tadeusz Kosciuszko, the Polish Revolutionary hero, visited him at the house on Elm Street. Returning from Spain, Humphreys brought back with him America’s first Merino sheep, going on to found the Humphreysville (now Seymour), where wool textiles were manufactured. David Humphreys was also a poet and a member of the literary group known as the “Hartford Wits.” His writings were collected in The Miscellaneous Works of David Humphreys (1804).
The house was not owned by David Humphreys, but by his brother Elijah, who had married Anna Mansfield, the daughter of the Episcopal minister, Richard Mansfield. Elijah, who died at sea, willed the house to his son, Elijah, Jr., who sold it to his sister, Betsey, and her husband, Thomas Vose, a sea captain and business partner of David Humphreys. The house had other owners over the years, eventually being converted into three apartments. Preserved by the Humphreys House Association, in 1961 the house was turned over to the Derby Historical Society. Restored beginning in 1976, it was first opened to the public as a museum in 1980.