Henry E. Bidwell House (1799)

The house at 55 Barry Road in Oxford was built in 1799 by James Dorman, who sold it the following year to George Cable. This sale included half-interest in a sawmill and gristmill, called Burrell Mills, located across the road along Eight Mile Brook. For a century, owners of the house would also own the mill, which is no longer in existence. The house has had many owners over the years, but was long known as the Bidwell Place, named for Henry E. Bidwell (1804-1883), who bought the house c. 1837. His family sold it in 1885. In the 1930s, the property, known as Petticoat Farm, was owned by H. Reinhardt Lewis, an artist who painted the local landscape. Built into a hillside, the house has an extra story in the rear.

Rouse Davis House (1846)

The house at 64 (66 in the nomination form for the Noank Historic District) Pearl Street in Noank was built in 1846. It is known as the Rouse Davis House. According to the Genealogical and Biographical Record of New London County, Connecticut (published by J.H. Beers & Company of Chicago, 1905):

Rouse Davis grew up at Westerly, [RI] and in early manhood went as a young farmer on Fisher’s Island, where he met the lady that later became his wife; she was Desire Brown, daughter of Peter Brown, of Stonington. After their marriage they lived for a time in Groton engaged in farming, and then moved to Quaugutaug Hill in Stonington. Mr. Davis was an industrious, reliable man, and was engaged in various kinds of work at Mystic, New London, Sag Harbor and Noank. His death took place in the present home of [his son] Capt. [Henry E.] Davis, in 1861, at the age of sixty-three years. His widow survived to the age of eighty-six years, dying in 1881. They were good, Christian people, members of the Baptist Church at Noank.

Martin Moon House (1866)

In the nineteenth century, as the Bayliville section of Middlefield developed into an industrial area, many houses were erected for local workers. A good example of one of these is the house at 53 High Street. It was built in 1866 by Martin Moon, who possibly worked at the Metropolitan Washing Machine Company. Moon purchased the land using the severance pay he received after his service in the Union army during the Civil War. The house was later owned by the Lyman Gun Sight Corporation.

Elam Case House (1790)

The house at 271 Cherry Brook Road in Canton was built c. 1790 by Sgt. Daniel Case for his son, Elam Case (1772-1848). The upstairs fireplace has “ELAM” carved in the stone base. A later owner, William Elliot, built a pool to replace an ice pond that was destroyed in the Hurricane of 1938. The pool is fed by a brook that comes downhill through a pine grove set out by Benjamin F. Case, Elam’s grandson, who was born in the house. As related in Reminiscences (1908), by Sylvester Barbour:

Mr. Rollin D. Lane, a Canton boy, early orphaned by the death of his father, relates to me a pleasing incident in the life of another of those early Canton men, Mr. Elam Case, grandfather of Benjamin F. Mr. Case’s family lost a little household article, of no great value, and Rollin happened to find it, and he promptly returned it. Mr. Case proceeded to reward him, and, in doing that, to leave on the boy’s mind an impression that would probably never be effaced. He said to the lad, handing out 25 cents: “Here are 12½ cents for your finding the article, and 12½ cents for your honesty in returning it.” In those days one of the pieces of silver money was one stamped 12½ cents, and commonly called ninepence. Such a fatherly address of commendation of a good deed is worthy of imitation by actual parents.