Built for Jonathan Cowles, a wealthy merchant, in 1799 on Main Street in Farmington. Like the John Watson House in South Windsor, the Jonathan Cowles House is a three-story Federal mansion. It was bought by Miss Porter’s School in 1908 and is now a dormitory known as Colony. This was the dorm lived in by Jacqueline Bouvier when she went to the school.
Asa Andrews was a tinsmith in Farmington whose Federal-style house on Main Street was probably built sometime after he purchased the land in 1804. Nearby stands his c. 1803 tin shop (which perhaps originally dates to the 1690s). After Andrews‘ death in 1831, his widow, Nancy Bidwell Andrews, ran a school for young children in the house. In the mid-nineteenth century, the house was owned by Deacon Simeon Hart, a teacher and headmaster at the Farmington Academy, who later ran his own boarding school in his home. Deacon Hart was the Farmington Savings Bank‘s first secretary and treasurer and the bank was originally located in his house. After his death, in 1853, the bank moved down Main Street to the home of Samuel Smith Cowles, its second Treasurer.
Capt. Allyn Stillman was a Revolutionary War blockade runner and soldier in the militia. His house, built in 1766 on Main Street in Wethersfield, features a typical Connecticut River Valley double door. Allyn’s brother, Nathaniel Stillman, Jr., was also a ship captain and had a house on Main Street.
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Timothy Stillman was a later resident of the house on Main Street in Wethersfield that bears his name. It was built around 1750, or perhaps even earlier. Captain and Deacon Timothy Stillman was a ship master who commanded the brig Ontario.
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Julius Gay, a president of the Farmington Savings Bank, was also a historian of the town. His Gothic Revival-style house on Main Street, built in the 1860s or 1870s, was left to Miss Porter’s School in his daughter Florence’s will in 1952.
The Dr. Erastus Cooke House, on Main Street in Wethersfield, was built in 1855 and features a hipped roof.
Edit (7/13/08): According to an April 2008 draft of the Old Wethersfield Master Plan (available as a pdf file), “Within the village center of Wethersfield, Dr. Erastus Cooke operated a chemical factory making dyes, saltpeter, and medicines on Chemical Lane.”
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A 1717 farmhouse, on Main Street in Farmington, was purchased in 1798 and enlarged by Dr. Eli Todd. He had been educated at Yale and settled in Farmington to practice medicine, setting up a hospital for patients with smallpox. Later moving to Hartford, he became a pioneer in the field of psychiatry. He was the principal founder of the Connecticut Retreat for the Insane in Hartford, now known as the Institute of Living, and became its first superintendent, serving until his death in 1833. His house in Farmington would have other owners, including Alfred Pope, who bought the house in 1899 and lived here while his new home, Hill-Stead, was being constructed nearby. Pope made additional alterations to the house in the Colonial-Revival style.
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