Martha Culver House (1857)

Ammi Culver, who owned a brickyard on the banks of the Quinnipiac River, built the house at 290 Quinnipiac Avenue in North Haven in 1857. After his death in 1865, his widow Delia lived their with her children, Benjamin and Martha, and Samuel Sackett, her second husband. Martha Culver (1864-1926) married Frank Smith, but soon divorced him. After traveling for some years, she lived the rest of her life in her old family home in North Haven. She later willed her house and land to the the town, stipulating that the property be used as a community gathering place that would include a library and recreational fields. She had been a member of the Friday Afternoon Club, which had started a private library in 1912. First located in the vestibule of the Baptist Church, it moved to the Culver house in 1927 and continued in operation by the Friday Afternoon Club until 1962 and thereafter by the town as the Montowese branch of the North Haven Public Library until 1978, when library operations were consolidated at the main town library. Today Martha Culver Memorial is preserved by the North Haven Historical Society as a house museum and also contains the Brockett collection of early farm tools and equipment.

Dr. H. S. Dean House (1820)

The Greek Revival house at 1104 Main Street in South Coventry dates to circa 1820. By 1857 it was the property of the owners of the D & W Huntington silk mill, located along Mill Brook. It was later the home of Dr. Henry S. Dean (1823-1898). Born in Holland, Massachusetts, Dr. Dean, a graduate of Jefferson Medical School in Philadelphia, practiced medicine in South Coventry and surrounding towns for forty years. In a 1912 poem celebrating the two hundredth anniversary of the First Congregational Church in South Coventry, Forrest Morgan honored the late doctor:

Not cold in our hearts the physician, best brother in homes beyond name.
Whose face that the kind soul illumined bore healing wherever it came;
Who not seldom gave life to the new-born, kept sickness a lifetime at bay.
Then closed the cold eyelids forever and paid the last rites to the clay.

Henry Hooker House (1769)

The house at 111 High Road in the Kensington section of Berlin was built c. 1769 by Elijah Hooker (1746-1823), a direct descendant of Thomas Hooker, the founder of Hartford. The house was much altered in the mid-nineteenth century by Elijah‘s grandson, Henry Hooker (1809-1873), who added a new bracketed roof with dormer gable, a new entry portico and removed the old center chimney to create a central hall extending to the third floor. Henry Hooker was engaged in the carriage manufacturing business in New Haven, becoming the head of Henry Hooker & Co. in the 1860s.

Captain David Beecher and Hannah Perkins Beecher House (1762)

The house at 545 Amity Road in Bethany was built in 1760 or 1762. It faces south, parallel to the road, and is built into a hillside. It was originally owned by Captain David Beecher and Hannah Perkins Beecher. The earliest known conveyance of the property was in 1851 from Lysias Beecher to David Beecher and William M. Hull. It passed through other owners until Hubert W. Delano acquired it in 1946. It was conveyed in 1955 to Edna L. Delano (1890-1982), who had been an army nurse in World War One. In 1986, her sons, Hubert and William Delano, gave a parcel of land south of the house, called the Delano Sanctuary, to the Bethany Land Trust in honor of their mother, Edna L. Delano.

This post has been updated on March 26, 2021 with new information from the current owner (since 1986) of the house. The name of the post has also been changed from the “Lysias Beecher House” to the “Captain David Beecher and Hannah Perkins Beecher House” to reflect how it is listed in the State Register of Historic Places.

Adelaide Wilcox House (1852)

The house at 880 Hopmeadow Street in Simsbury, named for Miss Adelaide Wilcox, was built in 1852-1853 and has been owned by a number of prominent families associated with the Ensign Bickford Company. Originally having an Italianate design, the house was altered to the Neo-Classical Revival style around 1900. Also added was a third floor with a grand ballroom. Since 1950 the house has been the Vincent Funeral Home.