The house at 227 Melrose Road in East Windsor was built by John M. Pease (1832-1891) in 1860, the year he married Laura Lucinda Phelps. Pease became a successful farmer and his son, John B. Pease, acquired the neighboring Thompson Farm and farmhouse around 1900.
Harry Shepard (1794-1839) was the youngest son of Abel Shepard, a shipbuilder in Middle Haddam. Abel gave land to his three sons and Harry built a house on his allotment (now 119 Moodus Road) in 1825. The house is transitional between the Federal and Greeek Revival styles. It was inherited by his son, Charles, who had worked for a time as a tinsmith in Cobalt, and remained in the Shepard family until 1946.
Housed at the William L. Clements Library at the University of Michigan are the diaries of Jonathan Samuel Wilcox (1791-1875), a Madison storekeeper. Covering nearly thirty years (1844-1875), the diaries document Wilcox’s business and religious activities (he describes his church attendance and evaluates the sermons he heard there, sometimes after attending three sermons at three different churches on the same day), as well as his political involvement. A staunch Democrat, Wilcox was hostile to abolitionists and opposed the Civil War. Several of his children and other relatives lived in Augusta, Georgia (collections of family letters are held by libraries at Yale and the University of Georgia. Wilcox’s own house, built in the Federal-style in 1830, is located at 558 Boston Post Road across from the Green in Madison.
John Edward Cowles (1818-1898), prosperous farmer and a director of the Hartford bank, built the house at 47 Main Street in Farmington in 1844. When it was erected, the house was in the Italianate style. It was inherited by Cowles’ son, Henry Martyn Cowles (1845-1926), who was the New England agent for the M.H. Birge & Sons, manufacturers of fine wallpapers. The house was inherited by H. M. Cowles’ two unmarried nieces who sold the property to Rose Anne Hardy Day Keep in 1927. She and her husband, Robert Porter Keep, headmaster of Miss Porter’s School, extensively remodeled the house in 1927 in the Neoclassical Revival style, adding two-story porticoes with Corninthian columns on either end of the building’s street-facing elevation. Since 1968 the house has been a dormitory of Miss Porter’s School called Porter-Keep House.
The house at 257 Fenn Road in Cheshire is described in Edwin R. Brown’s Old Historic Homes of Cheshire, Connecticut (1895):
This old but well-preserved house is situated about one hundred yards directly south of the Silas Ives place. The main part was built by Nathaniel Ives in about the year 1750. Nathaniel was the youngest son of Deacon Joseph Ives, Cheshire’s first settler[.]
Nathaniel Ives had six sons who all served in the American Revolution. His son Jotham, according to Brown,
took an active part in the defence of his country, enlisting under Captain Bunnell of Wallingford, whose company joined Wadsworth’s Brigade to reinforce Washington’s army at New York. He was engaged in the battle of Long Island, August 7. 1776, and White Plains, October 28th, the same year; also accompanied Washington on his retreat through New Jersey. On his return from the war, he became part owner in his father’s house, and later received a deed for his entire interest. He married Lillis Fisk of Providence. R.I.
As Brown relates, their son,
Benedict Ives built the addition to this house and resided here until his death, at the age of 83 years. Uncle Benedict was well known throughout the town as a man fond of his books and a good story. His wife, Betsy Bristol (Aunt Betsy she was called), was noted for her hospitality to friend or traveler, and it was a common saying, by those who frequently passed her door, that “If we can reach Aunt Betsy’s by noon, we are sure of a good dinner.”
The house at 1970 Main Street in East Hartford was built c. 1818. It is not known why the house was built with its front facade facing away from the road. Ownership of the house has been traced back to Elizur Anderson, a farmer.
The house at 76 Tolland Green in Tolland, built in 1883, rests on eleven hand-cut granite blocks. Built for Ransel Agard (1815-1889), it was home to five generations of the Agard family. Ransel taught school for a number of years and then, according to the Commemorative Biographical Record of Tolland and Windham Counties (1903),
In 1844, in partnership with a party by the name of Woodruff, Mr. Agard opened up a grocery business on Asylum street, in Hartford. Several years later the firm name was changed to Sumner & Agard, his brother-in-law, William Sumner, having become his partner. The business prospered and a few years after, Mr. Agard became the sole proprietor. Then he rented his business property in Hartford and bought a store in Vernon, Conn.; in 1866 he removed a stock of goods from Hartford, and until 1871 conducted the largest general store in Vernon. At that time he sold the business and settled in Tolland, retiring from activity and spending his last days in comfort and enjoyment in his pleasant home, dying here on Jan. 27, 1889. Mr. Agard was a stanch Republican, having borne testimony all his life in favor of the abolition of slavery. No inducement could be offered to cause him to accept political office, although he supported the standard bearers of his party with characteristic vigor.
His son, William Augustus Agard, worked a number of years in the mid-west until returning to Connecticut in 1887. According to the source quoted above:
In 1889 he was elected to the position of manager of the Underwood Manufacturing Co., of Tolland, Conn., the business being the manufacture of belts and belting. This company is now known to the commercial and industrial world as the William Sumner Belting Co., of which Mr. Agard has been the president since its formation, in 1898.
On Sept. 15, 1874., Mr. Agard was married to Miss Catherine Bissell, a daughter of Sanford Bissell, of South Windsor. [. . . .] Mr. Agard is one of the leading men of Tolland, and is President of the Savings Bank of Tolland, being elected to that position in 1902, and he is financially interested in many lines. For many years he has been a leader in the Congregational Church and since 1896. has been one of its deacons, and is also a member of the Society’s committee of this church. In politics he has been a life-long Republican, but has declined political honors for many years, serving now only on the school board.
William A. Agard served in the state legislature, as did his brother, Edwin S. Agard,.
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