On the western edge of the village of Rockfall in Middlefield is a Greek Revival house at 51 Derby Road at the corner of Main Street. The house was erected c. 1840 by Lewis Miller, who had acquired the land in 1836 from Jane W. Baldwin. Lewis was the son of Giles Miller and the grandson of Deacon Giles Miller, an early settler of the area. The house remained in the Miller family until 1893.
The house at 1 Broad Street in Guilford was built in 1804 by architect-builder Abraham Coan for Abel Chittenden (1779-1816) on land that had been in the Chittenden family since 1639. After Abel’s death, his widow was in financial straits. She sold the house to Danforth Nettleton, who built the property’s unusual fence. In 1851, Abel’s son, Simon Baldwin Chittenden, returned to Guilford from New York, where he had made a fortune in the dry goods business. He bought back the old family homelot and developed the property into a landscaped summer estate. Behind the house he built a stone water tower, called Cranbrook Tower. Chittenden also added a Queen Anne-style front porch to the house, which was later removed, and a rear wing for a ballroom. He named the house at 1 Broad Street “Carnbrook,” after the place in England from which his ancestor, William Chittenden, had emigrated. He also purchased the house next door, at 29 Broad Street, which he named “Mapleside.” The house at 1 Broad Street remained in the Chiitenden family until 1968.
The Billings Burtch House, located at 19 Nothwest Street in Stonington, was built circa 1780. The house may be named for Sgt. Billing Burtch (1746-1836). Grace Denison Wheeler describes the house in her 1903 book, The Homes of Our Ancestors in Stonington, Conn.:
The Billings Burtch house formerly stood where Mr. Peleg Hancox built his fine new house on Water Street, but about 1850 it was moved from there to the corner of Water and High Streets by Mr. Ezra Chesebrough, who purchased it and placed it where it now stands. It was some three feet or more above the road bed, with its yellow front door facing south, the approach to which was by some rambling stone flags, or slabs, about four or five inches thick, and placed as they were broken out with neither form nor comeliness. At one time the house was tenanted by George Howe, who was sexton and tithing-man at the old Baptist Church, and at another time Mrs. Elias Gallup, sister of Mrs. Ezra Chesebrough, lived there and had a millinery store. According to an old letter found, Mr. Billings Burtch died in this house aged ninety-two years.
The house must have been moved again to its current address.
Ransom Hudson (1810-1871) was a farmer and shoemaker in Oxford who also served as postmaster and Justice of the Peace. He built the house at 434 Oxford Road in Oxford for his mother, Mary Clark.
The house at 67 Church Street in East Hartford was built as a five-bay Federal-style house by Stephen Cadwell shortly after he bought the land in 1822. He sold it just a few years later. The sixth bay to the north was added c. the 1870s. The bay window on the south end was also added later.
The house at 18 Church Street in the village of Noank in Groton was built in 1859. It is known as the John Palmer House. This was possibly the John Palmer whose father, John Palmer (1787-1859), started the shipbuilding business in Noank that his sons, John and Robert, would develop into the highly successful Noank Shipyard, known as the Palmer Yard.
The Federal-style residence at 63 Main Street in North Stonington was built in 1819 by Andrew Baldwin, the village carpenter. The house is located next to the Shunock River and a millpond that served a nearby sawmill. At the time, North Stonington village was home to a number of mills and was called Milltown. Later, in the twentieth century, the Baldwin property was owned by Frank and Alma Limpert, who operated Limpert Realty. Starting in 1960 (they sold the property c. 1987), the couple collected artifacts and added new structures to the grounds. Frank Limpert built two dams and a sluice gate to utilize dammed water for a waterwheel he constructed and attached to a new mill addition at the rear of the building, inspired by one at the birthplace of the artist Gilbert Stewart in North Kingstown, R.I. The Limperts also brought to the grounds an 1871 mill from Ohio and an 1814 schoolhouse, the latter of which they filled with period schoolhouse furniture and objects. They tore down the termite-infested blacksmith shop and replaced it with a replica, and turned the old carriage house into a museum filled with historical artifacts. They often welcomed visits by local schoolchildren and other visitors. The mill still bears a sign that read’s “Limpert’s Gristmill.” The old carriage house was more recently home to “The Village Antiques and Collectibles.”
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