Ira Smith House (1791)

Ira Smith of Prospect was born in 1757 at his family homestead on Cheshire Road in Prospect. He served fifteen months in the Revolutionary War, going in place of his father, who was drafted in 1777. Ira was a private in Capt. Jesse Kimball’s company of Col. John Chandler’s 8th Connecticut Regiment. He was at Peekskill, at Germantown, detached for the defense of Fort Mifflin, and at Valley Forge. Smith later applied for a pension, giving a deatailed account of his service. After returning home, Ira Smith built the house at 61 Cheshire Road in Prospect sometime between 1779, when he married Elizabeth Judson, and 1791, when his father, Ephriam Smith, gave him 35 acres of the family farm. Ira and Ephriam were among the founders of Prospect’s Congregational Church. Ira died in 1835 and his son, John Andrew Smith, lived in the home until he died in 1878. It was then purchased by the Plumb family, who today operate Plumb Farm Flowers.

689 Tolland Stage Road, Tolland (1820)

The house at 689 Tolland Stage Road in Tolland was built c. 1820. It was originally located across the street, then called the Rockville Road. Around 1850, the lower level of the building was used as a workshop by Ira K. Marvin, who had settled in Tolland in 1820 and made carriages and wagons. In 1842 he had a serious illness and turned from carriage-making to farming. In 1851 he became a deacon of the Baptist Church. His son, Edwin, served in the Civil War and wrote the regimental history of the Fifth Connecticut.

Edmund Gookin House (1724)

The colonial saltbox house at 199 West Town Street in Norwich, adjacent to Bean Hill Green, is listed in assessor’s records as dating to 1724. A sign on the house gives a date of 1723 and the name John Waterman, Jr. This is presumably the John Waterman (1694-1742), who was called junior to distinguish him from his uncle of the same name. John Waterman, Jr. was one of the neighboring proprietors who re-set the green’s boundaries at a Town Meeting in 1729.

The sign next lists “Edmund Quincy Gookin, 1726.” According to Old Houses of the Antient Town of Norwich (1895), by Mary Elizabeth Perkins, Edmund Gookin, or Goodkin, (1688-1740), of Sherborn, Mass., bought the Norwichtown house of Sarah Knight (who operated a tavern) in 1722 and resided there until 1733, later purchasing a house in the Bean Hill district. Gookin was a follower of the Church of England and the first Episcopalian services in town were held at his house in 1738. According to Frances Manwaring Caulkins’ History of Norwich (1866):

The Gookin House was on the central plat of Bean Hill, “bounded southerly on the main road and easterly on the Green:” (now belonging to C. C. Williams.) The last of the Gookin family in Norwich was an ancient spinster, Miss Anna Gookin, who held a life interest in tho house for more than thirty years, and died in 1810, aged about eighty.

The last listing on the sign is “Lt. Jacob Witter’s Tavern, 1774.” Lieutenant of a militia company, Jacob Witter (1737-1798) kept a tavern/public house at Bean Hill. He was the son-in-law of Capt. Ebenezer Baldwin, who sold Witter his Bean Hill house in 1778. Witter then used that house as a tavern. An intriguing reference in the Genealogy of the Allen and Witter Families (1872), by Asa W. Allen, reads:

Jacob Witter, son of Ebenezer, married and lived on Bean Hill. He had no children and was insane.

Today the house is used as offices. (more…)