Ward S. Jacobs House (1929)

The Colonial Revival house at 70 Terry Road in Hartford was built in 1929 and is currently home to the Gengras family (only the third family to live in the house). It was designed by the architectural firm of Smith & Bassette for Ward S. Jacobs. The architects’ plans for the house are in the collections of the Connecticut Historical Society, as well as a color film of the property from 1941 that shows Editha Jacobs tending to her garden and her husband, Ward S. Jacobs, mowing the lawn. Ward S. Jacobs was a mechanical engineer. In 1908, he acquired the patent and equipment for a device to remove broken taps, created by John Kinvall of Worchester, Massachusetts in 1902. Jacobs named his new enterprise the Walton Company, after the maiden name of his grandmother, Albina Walton Jacobs. He sold the business in 1936. The above photograph was taken in December, 2017, during the 37th Annual Friends of the Mark Twain House Holiday House Tour.

John Foote, Jr. House (1780)

A sign on the house at 360 Cherry Brook Road in Canton gives a date of 1743, but according to the Canton Sesquicentennial, 1806-1956, A Short History of Canton, p. 99, it was built about 1780 by John Foote, Jr. (1760-1803). His son, Lancel Foote (1790-1865), was chosen a deacon in the Congregational Church in 1839 and was superintendent of the Sunday School organized in 1819. Lancel Foote also held many town offices and was a representative to the state legislature.

Capt. Willoughby Lynde House (1799)

The house at 174 North Cove Road in Old Saybrook was built in 1799 by Willoughby Lynde, a wealthy sea captain. Willoughby and his father, Samuel Lynde, engaged in farming and trade with the West Indies. Both were also slave owners. Nine enslaved people worked on the Lynde farm and wharf and also increased the family’s wealth by producing cloth. The Lynde House has an ell, which was built c. 1645 as a separate building. In the eighteenth century, the ell was owned by another mariner, Captain Samuel Doty, a West Indies trader and shipbuilder, who had a shipyard, warehouse and wharf on the Connecticut River. Capt. Doty’s own house was torn down in 1813, when the Samuel Hart, Jr. House was built. He used the ell as a bakery for ship’s bread. The ell was attached to the Lynde House about the time of the latter’s construction. The ell is to the right of the house’s front facade, while on the left is a new addition, constructed since 2008.

Otis Smith House (1873)

From the mid-nineteenth century, pistols were being manufactured in the Rockfall section of Middlefield in a factory begun by Henry Aston, Ira N. Johnson, Sylvester Bailey, John North and others. The pistol factory burned down in 1879. As related in the History of Middlefield and Long Hill (1883), by Thomas Atkins,

By the burning of the pistol factory Mr. Otis Smith, who was at that time doing quite an extensive business there, lost machinery, tools, stock, and goods. Nothing was saved. In Nov., 1880, Mr. Smith again began manufacturing in P. W. Bennett’s factory, where he remained until July, 1882. In Dec, 1881, he purchased of Ira N. Johnson, the pistol factory property, and erected thereon a three-story brick building, 100 feet long by 30 feet wide, and is now manufacturing a pistol of his own invention known as the “Smith’s revolver;” also several patented articles in the hardware line.

Eight years before he constructed his new factory, which in recent years was restored and converted into a residence by owner Dick Boynton, Otis Smith erected his family residence at 135 Main Street. The French Second Empire-style house and adjacent carriage house were built in 1873. The long Colonial Revival front was probably added in the in the first twenty years of the twentieth century. Smith died in 1924 and the following year his heirs sold the house to Franc and Lillie Rodowic. (more…)

Elisha Case House (1806)

Deacon Elisha Case (1755-1839) built the house at 45 Lawton Road in Canton in 1805-1806. Elisha Case is one of the founding fathers of the town of Canton because he signed the petition to make Canton a separate town from Simsbury in 1806. His house was later owned by George Mills, Newell Minor (c. 1855) and by 1869 by Wells Lawton (1830-1898), who married Eliza Higley. It was then the home of Wells’ son, Fred Lawton, who was born c. 1870. Lawton’s widow, Helen Gilbert Lawton, lived in the house for many years after his death. In 1919, Fred Lawton urged his friend, James Lowell, Sr., to purchase the Higley farm. Lowell would build the Canton Public Golf Course there in 1931.