The house at 234 Armstrong Road in Coventry, dramatically situated on a hillside, was built c. 1830. Originally the Stanley family farmhouse, the house was later the home of D. W. Huntington, who owned a silk mill along the nearby Mill Brook in the 1860s-1880s. Originally from Montville, Huntington had moved to Coventry in his youth. He had been overseer of a cotton mill and studied civil engineering. In 1874, Huntington and William A. Hempstead patented an improvement in water-meters.
The house at 144 Main Street in Farmington was built sometime between 1771 and 1797. In the former year, the land was acquired by John Case, who died in 1791. Originally from Simsbury, Case made hats with his son Coral, for whom he may have bought the land. The house was built by either Coral, who died in 1800, or his father. In 1810 it was acquired by Richard Cowles (1786-1845), a prominent citizen who served as town treasurer (1832-1839) and state representative (1834).
The Burrows House at Mystic Seaport, built between 1805 and 1825, was originally erected on Water Street, on the Groton side of the Mystic River. In the 1860s and 1870s, it was the home of Seth and Jane Burrows. By that time the house had been raised above a new story in which Seth Winthrop Burrows sold groceries. The house was dismantled in 1953 to make way for a bank and then reassembled at Mystic Seaport. (more…)
The house at 40 Pearl Street in the Noank section of Groton was built circa 1850. It was the home home of Horace W. Davis, probably Horace Winthrop Davis (1823-1891) who married Harriet Ashby in 1845.
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The house at 17 Pearl Street, on the Groton side of Mystic, is currently the home of Dinoto Funeral Home. A sign on the house indicates it was built circa 1874 and was the home of Allen Avery, undertaker. As related in the Genealogical and Biographical Record of New London County (1905), Allen Avery was born in 1838 and married Alice Babcock Hinckley in 1862. As the book continues:
Mr. Avery spent his boyhood days in Old Mystic, securing an excellent education in the public schools and at the academy at Mystic. Leaving school he worked as a ship joiner with his father in the Greenman yards, but in 1864, he embarked in an undertaking business at Mystic, in a store built by his father. Later, he purchased the store, and carried on an undertaking business for a number of years, but about 1884, he retired from that line, continuing, however, to operate his furniture store, which he had in the meanwhile established, until 1895. He is now engaged in the real estate business.
Apparently he lived in the house at 17 Pearl Street for no longer than twelve years, as the biography notes:
For the past seventeen years he has lived on the Stonington side of Mystic, in a house he built in 1886, so that he takes a deep interest in the affairs of the town of Stonington. For thirteen years he was a menber of the executive committee of the fire district. and was one of the organizers of the Hook and Ladder Company, which he served faithfully and ably as treasurer for twenty-one years. He is now vice-president of the Avery Memorial Association. which he served as president for two years. In fact there are few measures of a public character, designed to advance the interests of Mystic, in which he has not been concerned.
The house at 36 Denison Avenue in Mystic was built in 1864 for John N. Colby. He was a ship and sign carver and decorator who also held a number of patents, including one with John E. Coffin from 1875 for a combined cane and umbrella. From 1866 to 1892, the house was the residence of Capt. George E. Tripp. He had married Lydia Stanton Spicer in 1855.
James Johnston, Jr. had a long career at the Aetna Fire Insurance Company of Hartford, starting in 1902. Listed as a stenographer in 1909, by the mid-1930s he was agency supervisor of the company’s the southern department. Johnston’s 1907 house, an example of the American Foursquare house form, is at 15 Elm Street in East Hartford. Johnston held a number of public offices in East Hartford, including city clerk, fire commissioner, and serving on the board of education. According to an article that appeared in the Hartford Courant, July 18, 1940, James Johnston of 15 Elm Street protested that he and several others had been ignored by the 1940 Census. An checkup reveled that the East Hartford division might have missed as many as 300 persons.
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