Capt. Samuel Lee House (1750)

At the corner of State and North Streets in Guilford is a house (1 North Street) built circa 1750. The Greek Revival front door-surround was added later. The house is named for Samuel Lee (1742-1819), who served in the Coast Guard during the Revolutionary War and was promoted to captain just before the war ended. The house may also have been erected later, around the time of Lee’s marriage to Agnes Dickinson in 1763. There are many stories of Agnes Lee’s bravery during the Revolution when her husband was frequently absent. As recounted in Old Paths and Legends of the New England Border (1907), by Katharine M. Abbott:

Agnes Lee, the wife of Captain Samuel Lee of the Harbor Guard, was a noted foe to Tories. Powder was stored in the attic: one dark night a Tory knocked at her door, when Captain Lee was on duty; “Who’s there?” — “A friend.” — “No, a friend would tell his name,” answered Mrs. Lee, and fired. An hour later, an old doctor of North Guilford was summoned to attend a mysterious gun-shot wound. When the British landed at Leete’s Island, Captain Lee fired the agreed signal; “Grandma Lee responded by blazing away on the cannon set at the head of Crooked Lane, for she had not a son, and Uncle Levi was a cripple.”

According to another account, armed Torries actually burst in and she held them off until her husband arrived to shoot them. On another occasion, Lee barn caught fire and its sparks threatened the powder stored in the attic of the house. With no one else to save the house, Agnes Lee rushed upstairs and closed the the attic window to shut out the dangerous sparks. She later remarked that she hadn’t expected to come back down the stairs alive. The Guilford chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution is named for Agnes Dickinson Lee.

Samuel’s mother and his brother, Levi, also lived with them in the house. In 1794, Levi and his mother sold the house to William Starr, Sr. At that time, Samuel and Agnes built a new house at 292 State Street.

Guilford Smith Memorial Library (1836)

In 1836, Charles Smith (1807-1893) built a Greek Revival house on Main Street in South Windham. The following year, he and Harvey Winchester bought a nearby factory that they used for the manufacture of paper, forming the Smith & Winchester Company. Charles Smith‘s son, Guilford Smith (1839-1923), was born in the house. He was a wealthy philanthropist who left $25,000 for the establishment of a library in South Windham. A trust and Board of Trustees were established for in 1930 and the new Guilford Smith Memorial Library, occupying the old Smith House, opened on April 4, 1931.

William Boardman West Boarding House (1848)

By the 1840s, the village of Rockfall in Middlefield was an active industrial area with a number of mills. Between 1845 and 1848, William F. Boardman built two boarding houses for workers on Main Street in Rockfall. The one pictured above is the west boarding house at 127 Main Street; next door is the east boarding house. Otis Smith, who owned the nearby Smith pistol factory, bought the west boarding house in 1873. In the twentieth century, many Polish immigrants settled in the area, including the Drega family. Juzef W. and Weronica Drega acquired the house in 1923. Today it is a two-family house.

Capt. John Anthony Wolfe House (1809)

At 3 Gravel Street in Mystic is a house, built between 1809 and 1815, that was traditionally called the “Case Bottle House” because it resembled the shape of the cases in which bottles of liquor were once shipped. It is not the only house in the area to have had that title: the same name was applied to the Elijah Williams House in the village of Wolf Neck in Stonington (noted in The Homes of Our Ancestors in Stonington, Conn. (1903), by Grace Denison Wheeler). The house on Gravel Street was built by Capt. John Anthony Wolfe and has been much altered and enlarged over the years. Restored in 1951, it is now a commercial property, home to Grover Insurance.

Jonathan Bidwell House (1768)

Long thought to date to the seventeenth century (a plaque on the house once displayed the year 1666), the house at 475 Tolland Street in East Hartford is now thought to be the house referred to by Joseph O. Goodwin in East Hartford: Its History and Traditions (1879): “The house next east of this, owned by Oliver W. Elmer, was the homestead of Jonathan Bidwell. He died in 1815.” It was likely built around the time of Bidwell’s marriage to Anne Benton in December 28, 1768. It was then owned by Bidwell’s son, also named Jonathan, who died in 1858. Oliver W. Elmer bought the house in 1864 from Bidwell’s daughter, Ruhamah Bidwell Elmer. The house once had a “coffin door” on the west side that was removed around 1987.