Henry G. Beaumont (1829-1904) built the house at 26 Wells Avenue in East Hartford circa 1887 as a speculation and most likely rented the property until 1901. In that year, the house was acquired by Kate Harrison, wife of Charles Harrison (died 1911), who worked as a railroad yard clerk.
One realtor’s site describes the house at 75 Meeting House Lane, in the Greenfield Hill section of Fairfield, as the Nichols House. Built circa 1893, it is an excellent example of the Free Classic (Colonial Revival) variation of the Queen Anne style.
Copper Ledges is a Colonial Revival mansion in Bristol built in 1924 for Fuller F. Barnes (1887-1955). Barnes expanded the business started in 1857 by his grandfather, Wallace Barnes, who manufactured springs for clocks. Barnes and his brother, Henry, developed the company into the Associated Spring Corporation, which was organized in 1923 with Fuller Barnes as president. Associated Spring, part of the Barnes Group, would become the largest manufacturer of springs in the world.
The mansion stands on a prominent knoll at 60 Founders Drive, just southeast of the intersection of Stearns and Bradley Streets. Designed by local architect Henry Hayden, it was named Copper Ledges because the area is rich in copper. Extending to the south of the house are long formal gardens that end at a swimming pool and a dramatic loggia, erected in 1926. When it was constructed, the mansion was part of a 14-acre estate, which Barnes acquired in 1920. The Barnes family compound included the home of Fuller’s brother Henry Barnes, known as Chimney Crest, and various outbuildings. The estate has since been subdivided. Before he died, Fuller Barnes donated the house to Bristol Hospital, with the plan that it be made a convalescent home. The idea proved unworkable and the two Barnes houses instead became home to Laurel Crest Academy (later Laurel Crest Preparatory School), a private boys’ school, from 1960 to 1970. A girl’s school was added in 1970 and the name was changed to Devonshire-Laurel Crest, but the school closed in 1971. Copper Ledges is now a private residence. (more…)
In 1874, Linda Hosford left her property at 210 Cherry Brook Road in Canton to the Ecclesiastical Society of the First Congregational Church for a parsonage. An older house on the land, erected between 1787 and 1813 by Rev. Jeremiah Hallock (1756-1826), was torn down and the current house was built in 1876. The first minister to reside there, in 1877, was Rev. D. B. Hubbard. It is now a private home.
The house at 161 Main Street in East Berlin was built in 1888 by Mary O. Bunce. Married to Thomas A. Bunce, a blacksmith, Mary Bunce was the biggest real estate developer in East Berlin in the 1880s and 1890s. The house is part of a 10-acre parcel she acquired from Levi North in 1885 and sub-divided into house lots.
A sign on the house at 136 Middletown Road in Berlin bears the name Timothy Hubbard and the year 1735. The house was long associated with the Bulkley family. About 1825 it was acquired by Colonel William Bulkley (died 1878), who made tinman’s tools (bench shears & snips) and, for a time, spoons in a shop across the street. He had acquired the shop with his brother, Justus, in 1823. As related in Catharine Melinda North’s History of Berlin (1916):
Horse power was used at first and ten men were employed. The tools were forged in this shop, and then were taken to what is known as Risley’s saw mill, to be ground and polished. Justus Bulkeley, who lived in the house east of the shop, died in 1844. His brother William continued the business and, in 1850, put an engine into the factory.
She later records that
After the Bulkeleys sold the Risley mill to Lyman Wilcox, they ground their tinners’ tools and made rotary shears for cutting sheet metal in circles at Blair’s factory.
She also gives the following description:
Mr. Bulkeley was a genial man, full of fun, and a good neighbor—one of the kind who would go out of his way to do a favor. In his day, whenever there was an auction in town, Colonel Bulkeley was called upon to conduct the sale. By his ready wit he made much fun for the people, as he led up to the final “Going, going, gone.”
Various dates can be found for the construction of the house at 227 Ellsworth Street in the Black Rock section of Bridgeport. The City of Bridgeport assessor’s field card gives a date of 1837. The book, History of Black Rock, 1644-1955 (1955), compiled by Dr. Ivan O. Justinius, indicates it was built around 1845. The nomination for the Black Rock Historic District provides a date of 1854, the same year as the Capt. Charles Allen House at 213 Ellsworth Street. The two houses were originally identical, but around 1910 the house at No. 227 was altered by the addition of the gable roof and the octagonal projection between the main block and the side wing on the left.
Whatever the precise date of construction, the house at 227 Ellsworth Street was built by Isaac W. Jones (1806-1863). The house was later owned by Joseph Smith, who married Capt. Allen’s daughter, Sarah Allen. The house passed to their daughter, Viola, wife of James E. Hurlburt, and then to her daughter, Viola Hurlburt Carpenter. She and her husband, Hubert Benton Carpenter, later moved to Fairfield between 1957 and 1964.
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