Bradley Tavern (1782)

At the corner of West Morris Road and Bantam Road (4 West Morris Road), in the Bantam section of Litchfield, is a house that was once operated as a tavern. Leaming Bradley had acquired the property where the house stands in 1782. It is uncertain if the building was already standing at that time, or was erected sometime after. Leaming’s son Aaron inherited the property in 1787 and by 1797 he running a tavern and store in partnership with his son-in-law, Capt. Henry Wadsworth. Bradley & Wadsworth also had other business interests, including a forge, blacksmith’s shop, paper mill, grist mill, sawmill and distillery. In the 1820s, they also owned the house at 1062 Bantam Road. For several decades the area around the tavern was known as Bradleyville. An incident at their tavern in 1810 is said to have in part inspired Litchfield’s Congregational minister, Rev. Lyman Beecher, to write his influential “Six Sermons on Intemperance.” As described in The History of the Town of Litchfield, Connecticut 1720-1920 (1920)

A temperate man himself, Lyman Beecher had never been an advocate of total abstinence. “Two leading members of his own church”, says Miss Esther H. Thompson, Waterbury American, February 22, 1906, “Capt. Wadsworth and Deacon Bradley, kept a tavern and a grocery store in Bantam, where fermented and distilled liquors flowed freely as was then the universal custom in such places. Unseemly carousals were common, in one of which there was a battle wherein salted codflsh figured as weapon, adding thereby no dignity to the church, and deeply grieving the wife of Capt. Wadsworth, who was the sister of Deacon Bradley. She was a woman of superior intellect, deep piety, and early became a believer in total abstinence. It is said that her influence was potent in arousing Dr. Beecher to see and to preach against the evil of intemperance.

Aaron Bradley was a veteran of the Revolutionary War, a deacon of the Congregational Church and served terms as town selectman and in the state assembly. In 1830, he sold the property to another son-in-law, William Coe, who expanded the mercantile business in partnership with his brother-in-law under the name Kilborn & Coe (the company continued until 1883). In the 1850s, the tavern was known as William Coe’s Hotel.

Horace Hickok House (1845)

The house at 66 Greenwood Avenue in Bethel is transitional between the architectural styles of the Greek Revival (note the columns on the front porch) and the Italianate (note the rooftop cupola with curved windows). The house was erected c. 1845 (before 1851) by Horace Hickok, a hat manufacturer and descendant of Capt. Ebenezer Hickok, who had given land for the Bethel Congregational Church‘s meetinghouse and burial ground in the eighteenth century.

Armenian Church of the Holy Resurrection (1980)

There are two Armenian churches in New Britain. One is St. Stephen’s Armenian Church on Tremont Street, which was consecrated in 1925. Due to a dispute among the Armenian diaspora over the church hierarchy at a time when the Catholicos of the Armenian Apostolic Church resided in Soviet-controlled Armenia, there was a split in the Armenian Church in America in the 1930s. The Dashnak political party, which opposed Soviet rule in Armenia, formed a different wing of the church, focused on the authority of the Holy See of Cilicia, now located in Antelias, Lebanon. St. Stephen’s is part of that group, while non-Dashnaks formed a separate church. In in 1940 they purchased the former Ukrainian Hall on Irwin Place, which was consecrated as the Armenian Church of the Holy Resurrection on March 19, 1941. In the late 1970s, the City of New Britain purchased the Irwin Place property for redevelopment. The church decided to erect a new building, designed by architect Ramon Hovsepian of Worcester, Massachusetts, at 1910 Stanley Street, on land it had acquired in 1969. Ground was broken on April 1, 1979 and the new church was dedicated on September 28, 1980.

John Brainerd House (1776)

On December 5, 1776, Capt. John Brainerd (1754-1820) married Hannah Hubbard and soon after erected a house at what is now the corner of Saybrook Road and High Street in Higganum. John’s father, Jabez Brainerd (c. 1713-1778), once lived in a house that stood at the rear of the property. As related in The Genealogy of the Brainerd-Brainard Family in America, 1649-1908, Vol. II (1908), by Lucy Abigail Brainard,

[John Brainerd] was a militia man in the Revolutionary War, and possibly was at White Plains, N.Y. He joined the Regiment Apr. 7, and was disc. May 19, 1777. He was Sergeant in Lieut. Smith’s Company. He was spoken of as Colonel. He was justice of the peace from 1795 to 1804, inclusive. He lived opposite the Higganum Church, which was then a part of Haddam. He was a farmer.

John and Hannah (Hubbard) Brainerd had eleven children. She died in 1795. John married his second wife, Jane Spencer, in 1800. A later resident of the house, from 1839 to 1883, was Selden Usher (1806-1883), a manufacturer who operated an oakum factory on the Higganum River. The house remained in the Usher family until 1948. The property has a historic barn and a privy.

Noank Depot (1858)

At 102 Front Street in Noank is a small building with board-and-batten siding that is believed to have been the community’s original railroad station. It was built in 1858, with the completion of the last major section of the Shore Line Rail Road, connecting Boston and New York City. Since the discontinuation of railroad service, the building has been used as a store, with an extension erected on the Front Street side.

(more…)

Andrew L. Benedict House (1845)

Now used as an attorney’s office, the house at 152 Greenwood Avenue in Bethel was built c. 1845. From at least 1851 until 1867, it was the home of Andrew L. Benedict (born 1822), a New York merchant who also lived in Bethel, where he was a deacon of the Congregational Church and served as Justice of the Peace, Postmaster and on the Board of Education. He married Ruth Newell Allen in 1847. Their daughter, Ursula E. Benedict, was a member of the D.A.R. The house remained in the Benedict family until 1912, afterwards serving as the Bethel Public Library until 1924. It was later owned by William Hanna and then his wife, Elaine Hanna. Their son, Richard Hanna, was a Danbury attorney.

Old Post Office, Tolland (1790)

The construction date for the Greek Revival building at 55 Tolland Green in Tolland is uncertain. It was built c. 1750 to 1790, during which time it was used as an armory and then for the manufacture of sorghum molasses. It was moved to its current location by Col. Elijah Smith, who owned an adjacent tavern, and was used by his sons as a store. From then on, it has housed various small businesses. Charles Sterry, who served as Tolland postmaster for thirty-two years, from 1903 until his death, operated the post office, as well as his grain store and leatherworking business, from the building’s corner room. He was succeeded by Bertha Place, who sold candy, tobacco and stationary, and was postmistress until her retirement in 1956. She was followed by Helen Clough, who died 1968. Three years before, the post office had moved to Tolland Stage Road, leaving the building where it had been located for over sixty years.