Although built circa 1734, the house at 700-712 Main Street in Branford has been much altered with Queen Anne-style elements. It was built by Ephraim Parish, Jr. and was known as the Old Parish Tavern. In 1811 the building was renovated by Rev. Timothy Gillett, who resided there until his death in 1866. Rev. Gillett was pastor of the First Church of Branford for 59 years and founded Branford Academy in 1820. Today the building contains offices and one residential unit.
The house at 76 Jewett Street in Ansonia has been called the Prindle-Goldstein House by John Poole of the website/blog, A Preservationist’s Technical Notebook. The house was built c. 1795-1796 on land purchased in 1795 by brothers Joseph and Mordecai Prindle, the latter residing in the house. The brothers were sea captains and partners in a ship chandlery in Stratford. According to A History of the Old Town of Stratford and the City of Bridgeport, Part I (1886) by Samuel Orcutt:
In the year 1805, Josiah, Mordecai and Joseph H. Prindle, brothers, came from Derby and established in this store the West India business. They had three vessels employed in carrying out corn meal, horses and cattle, and bringing back rum, sugar and molasses. They lost two schooners in the fall of 1808, in a hurricane, with full cargoes of stock and corn meal, and all persons on board perished. As the result of these losses they failed, and gave up the business
Capt. Mordecai Prindle and a crew of seven were on one of those vessels caught in a September gale off Cape Hatteras. As related in The History of the Old Town of Derby, Connecticut, 1642-1880 (1880), by Samuel Orcutt and Ambrose Beardsley,
it is mentioned that a kildeer out of season perched upon the window sill of Mrs. Prindle’s house, which stood near Dr. Mansfield’s, and was heard to sing distinctly several times, in plaintive notes, and then disappear. [This was taken as a sign portending death.] Mrs. Prindle was deeply affected, and declared that her husband was that moment sinking beneath the merciless waves. From that day to this Captain Prindle, his seven men and vessel have not been heard from.
The house was next owned by William Mansfield, a son of Rev. Richard Mansfield. It then passed to Rev. Stephen Jewett (1783-1861), who assisted the ailing Rev. Mansfield and then succeeded him as Rector of Derby’s Episcopal Church. Jewett Street is named for him. Rev. Jewett ran a preparatory school in the house for young men intending to study at college to enter the ministry. In 1834 he moved to New Haven. The house passed through a number of owners until 1864, when it was acquired by Frederick C. Goldstein and his wife, Sophia Elizabeth, who had arrived from Germany six years earlier. Their son, Dr. Frederick C. Goldstein (1869-1928), later served as health officer and school physician for the City of Ansonia.
Dr. James Percival (d. 1807) was a prominent physician in the parish of Kensington in the town of Berlin. He was the father of the poet and naturalist James Gates Percival (1795-1856). The doctor is described by Julius H. Ward in The Life and Letters of James Gates Percival (1866):
He had a strong constitution and a vigorous mind. He easily grasped a subject, and was noted for keeping his own counsel and doing things entirely in his own way. He was social and persuasive in society, but divided his time mostly between his profession and his home. He was not liberally educated, but he had a taste for letters, and was as well read as most Connecticut doctors in his day. Except in winter, when he could use a sleigh, he made his calls on horseback, turning his saddle-bags into a medicine-chest. He was prompt in business and eminent in his profession. It was said of him by a friend: “Few physicians in a country town ever performed more business in a given time than Dr. Percival. This may be asserted of him both as it respects his whole professional life and also his daily visits. With a practice of nineteen years, he left an estate that was inventoried at fourteen thousand dollars.”
The same book describes the doctor’s house (381 Percival Avenue), built in 1784, in which James Gates Percival was born in 1795, and the surrounding neighborhood:
The house of his birth is still standing. It is a plain wooden building, bordering close upon the street, with a long sloping roof in the rear,-—a style of dwelling which our ancestors brought from England. It has now quite other tenants, and its shattered windows and uneven roof and weather-beaten paint show the marks of age. It is situated in one of the most romantic and charming regions in Connecticut. Near at hand is the parish church, standing on an elevated site, in the shade of fine old trees of buttonwood and oak, its low steeple cropping out just above their tops; in front of the house and over the way is an orchard slope; around it are patches of mowing and pasture; and at its foot is a beautiful sheet of water, which turns several mills in its progress, and then dashes over the rocks, and winds away among green meadows. Farm-houses are scattered everywhere among the neighboring eminences and in the valley. The whole neighborhood is remarkable for the rich and varied beauty of its scenery
At 38 Academy Hill in Watertown is a house that was erected in 1820 as a shop. It has been used for a number of different businesses over the years: first as Alanson Warren’s hat shop, then Russell Beer’s shirt factory, Dr. Walter S. Munger’s office (Dr. Munger served for many years as Watertown’s medical examiner and health officer) and finally Peter N. Lund’s tailor shop. It remained the Lund/Rose family residence for over 85 years. The interior was recently completely remodeled by a developer.
The oldest sections of the house at 1365 Main Street in Coventry date to 1750, but the Federal-style main section, which includes a rooftop monitor, was built c. 1800. Now used as offices and remodeled for that purpose, the house is named for a prominent early-nineteenth-century resident. In 1815, John Boynton (1783-1863) started a mill that manufactured wool carding machines of his own patent. Boynton was also a deacon of the Congregational Church.
The grand house at 91 North Cliff Street in Ansonia was built c. 1887 for Robert and Elizabeth Wood. Robert Wood was a factory superintendent at the Wallace and Sons brass mill. The house was later owned by the Tuttle family and c. 1960 it became the John T. Bennett Funeral Home.
The house at 349 Jonathan Trumbull Highway (Route 6) in Andover was built in 1749 to be the residence (Parsonage) of Rev. Samuel Lockwood (1721-1791), the first minister of Andover’s First Congregational Church. The house originally stood just to the east of its current location. It was moved in 1927 to make way for the construction of the Andover Public Library. At that time the house was most likely turned as well, so that its gable-end now faces the road.
Rev. Samuel Lockwood is described in Vol. I of William B. Sprague’s Annals of the American Pulpit, reprinted in Descendants of Robert Lockwood: Colonial and Revolutionary History of the Lockwood Family in America, from A.D. 1630 (1889):
Samuel Lockwood was descended from a highly respectable family, and was born at Norwalk, Conn., November 30th, 1721. He was the son of James and Lydia (Smith) Lockwood. He was graduated at Yale College in 1745. He pursued his theological studies under the direction of his brother, the Rev. James Lockwood, who had at that time been settled for several years as pastor of the church in Wethersfield.
An ecclesiastical society in Andover, Conn., having been formed in 1747 from the three towns of Coventry, Lebanon and Hebron, Mr. Lockwood, shortly after he was licensed to preach, was employed by that society as a candidate for settlement. He commenced his labors there about the beginning of 1748, when the parish voted “to hire him to preach as a probationer,” they passed this additional, and, as it would seem at this day, superfluous vote, that ” Mr. Lockwood may change with any orthodox minister to preach to us when he shall see cause.” Having after the manner of those days undergone a long probation among them as a candidate, he was ordained as pastor February 25th, 1749, O. S., the church having been constituted on the preceding day. The ordination sermon was preached by his brother the minister of Wethersfield. He continued in the faithful discharge of the duties of his office upwards of forty years.
[. . .] In 1774 he was appointed to preach the annual sermon before the Legislature of the State, and though there is nothing in it to indicate remarkable powers of mind, it is, nevertheless, a judicious, patriotic and well-adapted discourse. It is the only acknowledged production of his that was ever printed.
In 1791 an enfeebled state of health obliged him to desist from his labors, and by medical advice he visited the mineral springs at New Lebanon in the hope that the waters might prove beneficial to him. But in this both himself and his friends were disappointed; for after he had been there a short time his disease assumed an aggravated form, and very soon the afflicting tidings came back to his people that he was no longer among the living. He died on Saturday the 18th of June, in the 70th year of his age, and the 43d of his ministry.
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