Stephen Main House (1781)

The house at 1 Wyassup Road in North Stonington, known as the Stephen Main Homestead, is the headquarters of the North Stonington Historical Society. Built in 1781, the house was first owned by Luther Avery, who ran Avery Mills in town. Stephen Main bought the house in 1861. Born in North Stonington in 1805, Main went to New York City at age seventeen. There he ran a successful butter stall and became an extensive dealer in real estate. He returned to North Stonington in 1856 and purchased a sawmill and gristmill, located at the site of the lower dam on the Shunock River. He apparently constructed the present dam about 1850. The house was later owned by Fred Stewart Greene, an artist who was born in North Stonington, but was raised in Westerly, RI, where he later had his art studio. From 1911-1923, Greene operated an art school at Greene Gables cottage on the Hewitt Farm (in 2017 the town voted to demolish the cottage, which had been deemed unsafe). The North Stonington Historical Society, founded in 1970, acquired the Stephen Main House from Greene’s heirs in 1980.

Nelson Peck House (1851)

The house at 104 Peck Road in Bethany was erected sometime before 1851, at which time it was the property of Noyes Hotchkiss (1814-1866). It was acquired in 1867 by Justus Peck (1807-1885) for his son, Harry French Peck (died 1916), a blacksmith who made ox yokes and wagons (the house was conveyed by Justus to Harry in 1870). Harry’s son Nelson Justus Peck (died 1958) was born in the house in 1874 and the residence is named after him in the 1972 book Bethany’s Old Houses and Community Buildings, by Alice Bice Bunton.

Squires-Stanton House (1800)

Built as a Federal-style residence around 1800 by Phineas Squires, the house at 322 Main Street in Durham was later transformed (circa 1870) with alterations in the Italianate style. These include projecting eves with brackets, a painted string course connecting the pedimented lintels over the first story windows, and a hip-roofed portico. In 1817, the house was acquired by James Rose, a farmer who died in 1839. It was then sold to Abner Newton, Jr. who sold it in 1840 to Enos Rogers, a wealthy merchant of North Madison and a founder of the Merriam Manufacturing Company. His daughter Dorliska married her first cousin, Simeon S. Scranton. The house passed to the couple upon Rogers death. As described in a biography of their son, Charles Loveland Scranton, in Biographical Sketches of Representative Citizens of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (1901):

Simeon Sereno Scranton engaged in the business of book publishing at Hartford, Conn., in which subsequently he associated with him his son, Charles L. The firm of S. S. Scranton & Co. did an extensive business as book publishers. Among the works that issued from their press were: J. T. Headley’s History of the Civil War, Richardson’s “Field, Dungeon, and Escape,” Smith’s Bible Dictionary, Life and Epistles of Saint Paul, James Fawcett’s Commentary on the Bible, besides many others equally well known. The elder Mr. Scranton, finally selling his interest in the business, retired and spent his last days in Durham, Conn., where he died in 1892, at the age of sixty-nine years. His wife, whose maiden name was Dorliska Rogers, was born in Madison, Conn., and was a daughter of Enos Rogers. She was the mother of thirteen children, of whom ten grew to maturity.

Charles L. Scranton sold the house to John Southmayd in 1902. It remained in the Southmayd family until 1936, when it passed to the Francis family. (more…)

John Hudson House (1791)

The house at 26 Main Street in Old Mystic, Stonington was built c. 1791 by John Hudson, a tanner, on land he had acquired from Eleazer Williams in 1786. This transaction also included the gristmill across the street, at the head of the Mystic River. After his death in 1808, his son Phineas Hudson, continued the tanning business and inherited the house and mill, excepting the dower rights (1/3 of the house) of John’s widow, Mary. Two years before his death in 1811, Phineas (possibly ailing or under financial strain) sold the mill to his daughter Mary‘s father-in-law, Simon Avery. Mary bought the works back twenty-one years later. Mary married two Avery brothers. According to The Groton Avery Clan (1912), by Elroy McKendree Avery and Catharine Hitchcock Tilden Avery,

[Robert Nieles Avery] was b. Sept. 1, 1785, at Groton; m. June 19, 1806, at Groton, Mary (Polly) Hudson, dau. of Phineas and Margaret Hudson. She was b. Sept. 2, 1787, at Groton. He was a sea captain, and later a farmer. He was killed by the caving in of a sand bank, June 10, 1814. His widow m. 2d, Joseph Swan Avery, a brother of her husband. She d. Feb. 8, 1855, at Mystic.

[Joseph Swan Avery] was b. Oct., 1787, at Groton; m. Mrs. Mary (Hudson) Avery, dau. of Phineas and Margaret Hudson, and widow of his brother, Robert Niles Avery. She was b. Sept. 2, 1787, at Groton. He was a successful merchant and ship owner. She d. Feb. 8, 1855; he d. Nov. 10, 1865, both at Groton.

In 1816, Phineas’ heirs sold the house (except for Mary’s dower rights) to Jasper Latham, who added a shoe shop to the property. The house (now with the shop) was sold again in 1829.

St. John’s Episcopal Church Parsonage, Guilford (1870)

The house at 50 Ledge Hill Road in North Guilford was built circa 1870 by St. John’s Episcopal Church to serve as a parsonage. It replaced an earlier parsonage, built in the 1830s, that had burned down. Part of the building served as a town primary school sometime during the first decade of the twentieth century. The house has been a private residence since the church sold it in 1940-1941.

John D. Latham House (1843)

James D. Latham (1813-1899) was a shipbuilder in Noank. In the 1840s he entered into a partnership to build vessels with his brother, James A. Latham (1808-1902), whose previous partner, John Palmer (1787-1859), had retired. In 1868, James left the business to John, who continued to build ships into the 1880s. John D. Latham’s house at 31 Front Street in Noank was built in 1843, the same year he married John Palmer’s daughter, Lydia.