Horace Bower developed the residential block on Prospect Street in Windsor after the Civil War. One of the brick houses, erected c. 1875, is the residence known as the Bower Homestead, at 40 Prospect Street. It is next door to a nearly identical brick house built around the same time, the infamous Archer-Gilligan Murder House at 37 Prospect Street.
The house at 381 Saybrook Road in Higganum in Haddam was built in 1828 by Silas Clark, who lost it a year later in a lawsuit. Asahel P. Bailey purchased the house in 1849. Bailey was a wood turner who later became a blacksmith and worked for the D. & H. Scoville Hoe Company. After Bailey’s death in 1901, one of his two daughters, Sabra, and her husband, Frederic Kelsey occupied the house until the early 1930s. The house remained in the extended Bailey family until 1938.
Dr. John K. Bucklyn, Jr. was the son of John Knight Bucklyn (1834-1906), a Civil War veteran who in 1899 earned the Medal of Honor for his action during the Battle of Chancellorsville on May 3, 1863. The senior Bucklyn was an educator who founded the Mystic Valley Institute in 1868. His two sons both attended the Institute and then the New York Medical College to became doctors. Dr. J. K. Bucklyn, Jr. built the house at 56-58 East Main Street in Mystic c. 1890. As described in Picturesque New London and Its Environs (1901):
The residence and offices of Dr. John Knight Bucklyn, Jr., one of its ablest physicians, are located on East Main Street, Mystic, and are connected by telephone. Dr. Bucklyn is a graduate of the New York Medical College, class of 1887, and of the Mystic Valley English and Classical Institute, J. K. Bucklyn, L.L.D., Principal. He has a large practice in Mystic, Stonington, Old Mystic, Noank, Poquonnock, and New London. He is a member of the Odd Fellows, and Medical Examiner for the Prudential Life Insurance Company, of Newark, New Jersey, and for the Knights of Pythias. His office hours are from 2 to 3, and 7 to 8 P. M. Dr. Bucklyn was born in Mystic July 31st, 1865, son of Professor John K. Bucklyn and Mary M. Young Bucklyn. On June 25th, 1891, he was united in marriage to Mary Emma Hall, of Mystic.
The house at 276 West Main Street in Cheshire is an eclectic Victorian house built c. 1879 by Irwin Tolles Guilford (1856-1881), a bookkeeper at the Cheshire Manufacturing Company. His father, Ralph Hall Gilford (1820-1886), was one of the founders of the company, where he worked as a die sinker for many years. Irwin T. Guilford died at the age of twenty-six. His son, Irwin M. Guilford, later became secretary of the Ball & Socket Manufacturing Company, created after a 1901 merger of the Cheshire Manufacturing Company and the Ball & Socket Fastener Company of New Hampshire.
Merry Christmas from Historic Buildings of Connecticut!
The house pictured above, with a silhouette nativity scene in front, is located at 100 Barbourtown Road in Canton. It was built in 1821 as a story and a half house by Uriah Hosford, who raised it to two full stories in 1850. Hosford was a deacon of the First Congregational Church in Canton Center. The house was later owned by Deacon Archibald Mills, a Civil War veteran and farmer, who had an apple orchard and grew broadleaf tobacco and hay. In 1891, Mills removed the house’s large stone chimney and fireplaces. In 1902, he added onto the house a photographic studio for his son, Lewis. The studio later became a kitchen after another son, Irwin, married Bertha Hosford. Irwin Mills grew Canton’s last tobacco crop c. 1946-1947.
Lewis Sprague Mills (1874-1965) was an educator with a lifelong interest in photography. Lame in the left leg after an injury at the age of three, Lewis wore a steel brace for the rest of his life, but still labored for his father as a full-time field hand. He later used photography to support himself through school at Columbia University, where he earned a bachelor‘s degree in education in 1908 and master‘s degree in school administration in 1912. Lewis S. Mills worked as a teacher and then as a school supervisor in Burlington and Harwinton, while also continuing to be an avid photographer of local scenes. He is particularly known for his collection of over 500 photographs of Connecticut school houses. After retiring he edited The Lure of the Litchfield Hills magazine and wrote The Story of Connecticut (1932). Lewis S. Mills High School, which serves Burlington and Harwinton, is named for him.
Now a two-family home, the house at 91-93 Burnside Avenue in East Hartford was built c.1760-1775 by a member of the Hurlburt family, probably Joseph Hurlburt (1744-1796). The property passed to his son Nathaniel (died 1819) and then to another son, Luman Hurlburt (1788-1865). Joseph served seven terms as town clerk and Luman served six terms as town selectman. Luman‘s son, Joseph Olmstead Hurlburt (1822-1899), heavily mortgaged the house after his father’s death and it was soon sold out of the family. Both Luman and James Olmstead Hurlburt served as state representatives, in 1841 and 1863 respectively. As related in the Commemorative Biographical Record of Hartford County, Vol. I (1901):
Joseph O. Hurlburt, the father of this family, received his education in East Hartford, and for several years taught in the old North school, Hartford. During the last twenty years of his life he was principal of the Wethersfield high school, and he died March 18, 1899. He was a member of the County and State Teachers Association.
Located at 112 Main Street in the Rockfall neighborhood of Middlefield is a house built c. 1820 by Joseph Hale. He had received the land from his uncle in 1819, after his marriage to Julia Stow (died 1843). As executor, Hale settled the estate of his father-in-law, Joshua Stow, and then sold the house to Freeman Johnson in 1849. Hale moved to Ohio, where he died in 1855. Johnson sold the house to his son, Ira N. Johnson, who manufactured pistols. As related in the History of Middlefield and Long Hill (1883), by Thomas Atkins,
[the] Pistol factory was erected by a company of young men, namely, Henry Aston, Ira N. Johnson, Sylvester Bailey, John North, Nelson Aston, and Peter Ashton. They took a large contract of the government of the United States for making pistols; an additional contract was granted them. When the work was finished the property was put up at auction by the company, and Ira N. Johnson was the highest bidder, and the property came to him in 1852. Since then, the manufacture of pistols and other things has been carried on by Johnson and others up to the time the factory was burned, which was on the night of the 21st of Sept., 1879.
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