The house at 84 Windham Street in Willimantic was built in 1898 and was the home of Lorenzo Litchfield, a station agent for the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad. His wife, Lizzie Amelia Pomeroy, widow of John Bliss Fuller, was a member of the D.A.R. and the General Society of Mayflower Descendants.
The Georgian Colonial house at 24 Main Street in Farmington dates to c. 1769, but it may incorporate the earlier home of John Hooker (1665-1745), son of Rev. Samuel Hooker, built around 1688. The house eventually passed to John Hooker‘s grandson, Roger Hooker, Jr. (1751-1830), who later sold it to Col. Isaac Cowles. It then passed to the Colonel’s son Maj. Timothy Cowles (1784-1858), who sold it in 1834 to store-owner William Gay.
The Italianate house at 289 Main Street in Kensington (in the town of Berlin) was built c. 1855 for Milo Hotchkiss (1802-1874). At first a painter, Hotchkiss became a wealthy landowner (in 1850 his real estate holdings totaled a substantial $5,000). He also operated a station on the Underground Railroad. Hotchkiss was a descendant of Gideon Hotchkiss, who served in the French and Indian and Revolutionary Wars. The biography of Milo Hotchkiss is given in David N. Camp’s History of New Britain: With Sketches of Farmington and Berlin, Connecticut (1889):
Milo, son of Charles Todd and Leva H. Hotchkiss, was born at Homer, Courtland County, N. Y., Oct. 10, 1802. He married Rhoda Barrett, a native of Kensington, Jan. 22, 1826. Mr. Hotchkiss improved the limited advantages for education which he had in youth, and acquired habits of careful observation and thinking which characterized him through life. He early developed a natural taste for drawing and painting, and devoted several years to portrait painting, which brought him steady employment until other interests required his constant attention. He removed to Kensington in 1831, where he passed the remainder of his life. He had the care of a farm upon which he worked a part of the time, but was largely occupied in the settlement of estates and in public business. He was for many years justice of the peace, and was notary public until his death. For more than forty years he was a member of the board of school visitors, and for much of the time acting visitor. He was untiring in efforts to advance the cause of education, and especially to increase the efficiency and usefulness of public schools. He united with the Congregational Church soon after coming to Connecticut, and was ever a liberal supporter of gospel ordinances. He was an ardent advocate of the temperance and anti-slavery reforms, sometimes suffering in person and property from the attacks of opponents of these causes. He died Oct. 12, 1874.
As a young man, Nelson Augustus Moore, a Kensington-born photographer and painter, was inspired to further his artistic career after assisting Hotchkiss in painting a life study of a child killed in an accident in 1842.
The house at 360 Maple Street/1331 Forbes Street in East Hartford was built c. 1800. It was erected by Benjamin Roberts, Sr., possibly as a speculation, on land which, until 1818, was owned by the Congreational church. From the mid-nineteenth through the early twentieth centuries the house was owned by the Winslow family.
Oliver Filley, Jr. was a farmer and tinsmith who served as a militia captain during the War of 1812, although his Connecticut militia unit did not see any combat. Capt. Filley built the house at 130 Mountain Avenue in Bloomfield for his son Jay in 1834. The floorplan of the house consists of two intersecting wings, with the living quarters primarily in the west wing. The house, which has walls constructed of rubblestone and multi-colored traprock, was the third stone house to be built in Bloomfield, following a house built two years earlier by David Grant and the Francis Gillette House. The Filley House and farm were sold out of the family in 1849 and five years later was acquired by Samuel Bushnell Pinney. In 1913 the farm was acquired by the Missionaries of Our Lady of La Salette, a Catholic order which had a seminary in Hartford. They owned the property until 1987. It was acquired by the Town of Bloomfield in 1992. The Wintonbury Historical Society soon leased the house and began planning for its restoration. It will become a museum, cultural center, research library, and office for the Society.
The house at 23 Baileyville Road in Middlefield has a sign that reads “First Schoolhouse ~1800~.” Town assessor records give the house a date of 1830.
Glimpsed through the trees in the image above is a house that was once the home of two of the most famous people of the twentieth century. Located at 232 Tophet Road in Roxbury, it has been much altered over the years. It was built for a Revolutionary War veteran and was later the residence of playwright Arthur Miller and his wife (from 1956 to 1961) Marilyn Monroe. The couple had originally planned to replace the old farmhouse with a new home designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, but they decided the plan produced by the famous architect was too impractical and expensive. According to Homes of Old Woodbury (1959), p. 247, the house was built about 1783 by Captain David Leavenworth. Sheldon Leavenworth sold it to Elliot Beardsley in 1847 and twenty years later it was acquired by Charles N. Ward. Frederick H. Leavenworth bought the house in 1888 and his son sold it to Miller in 1949, the year the playwright wrote Death of a Salesman at his first Roxbury home. Miller lived in Roxbury from 1947 until his death in 2005. The Leavenworth House has has remained in Miller’s family. Ten years after his death, his daughter donated a 100-acre parcel to the Roxbury Land Trust.
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