Benjamin Hickok Tavern (1760)

The house at 245 Greenwood Avenue in Bethel is believed to have been built in 1760 by Ebenezer Hickok (1692-1774). It was used as a tavern during the Revolutionary War by his son, Capt. Benjamin Hickcok (1750-1816), a veteran of the war who also owned a store and a gristmill. Benjamin’s son, Eli Hickok (1770-1827), later had his hatter’s shop at the address. By 1899, the owner of the house was George B. Fairchild (1857-1931), a partner in the hat manufacturing firm of Farnam & Fairchild.

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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.

Dan Case Tavern (1786)

A rare example in Connecticut of an eighteenth century stone house is located at 30 Lawton Road in Canton. The gambrel-roofed house, initially used as a tavern, was erected in 1786 by Dan Case (1761-1815). He was the son of Lt. Dudley Case, who the first proprietor of what would become known as the Hosford Tavern. Dan Case later moved to Ohio. The house has an arched third-floor hall. From 1797 to 1799, Masonic meetings were held there by Village Lodge No. 29.

Roman Fyler Tavern (1794)

The house at 153 Chapel Road in Winchester Center was originally erected as a tavern, as described in Annals and Family Records of Winchester, Conn. (1873), by John Boyd:

Roman Fyler from Torrington, bought from Martin North, Jr., the Noble J. Everitt place, a third of a mile south of the Winchester Meeting-house. In 1794, in company with Reuben Marshall, he built the Washington Hatch house at the center, in the north wing of which they kept a country store, while Mr. Fyler kept a tavern in the body of the house. About 1800 he removed to Burke, Caledonia Co., Vt., where he resided during his remaining life.

Roman Fyler sold his business to John Chester Riley. As related by Boyd, in 1800 Riley

bought of Fyler and Marshall the Washington Hatch place at the center, where he traded and kept a tavern. In 1807 he built a store at the parting of the Old Country road and the Waterbury turnpike, in which he did an extensive business until his failure in 1816. Being a Jeffersonian in politics, while most of the traders of his day and vicinity were of the Federal School, he drew in to a large extent the trade of those of his own faith in this and the neighboring towns. After his failure, he was confined on the jail limits at Litchfield for a considerable time, and continued to reside there during his remaining life. He lived a bachelor until past middle age, and married at Litchfield.

The tavern eventually became the property of Washington Hatch and was known as Hatch’s Tavern.

Wilcox Tavern (1815)

The house at 206 Main Street in New Hartford was erected in 1815 a tavern by the Wilcox family. This section of town would become a center of industrial activity between 1847 and 1863, when an iron foundry was in operation. The area was known as the Furnace District or Puddletown, named for the method of iron production called puddling, in which bar iron was produced from pig iron. The Puddletown iron foundry burned down in 1863 and was not rebuilt because it employed an expensive, labor intensive process that was being superseded by more modern methods of iron refining. The tavern is now a private home.

Levi Ward Tavern (1799)

The house at 389 Saybrook Road in Haddam, across from the road leading to Higganum Landing, was operated as a tavern during the area’s heyday as a river port and shipbuilding center. The house was built between 1799 and 1802, the year the Middlesex Turnpike opened. It was erected by Dr. Levi Ward (1771-1861), who soon left Connecticut, as related in Fifty Puritan Ancestors (1902), by Elizabeth Todd Nash:

Levi Ward, Jr., son of Levi and Mary Meigs Ward, born July 29, 1771, graduated at Yale College, studied medicine under Dr. Jonathan Todd, and took his M.D.; married Mehitable Hand, youngest daughter of Capt. Daniel Hand.

. . . .

In 1807 Levi Ward, Sr., John Ward and Levi Ward, M.D., went to the “Genesee Country” [in New York State] to settle. Bergen was then in the wilderness and Indians, bears, wolves, deer, were the neighbors of the little company from Haddam. Dr. Ward was the only physician in that locality, and he was sent for from distant settlements, entailing long wearisome journeys through the forests.

In 1817, from his new home in Bergen, Dr. Ward sold the tavern in Connecticut to George Smith. It was acquired by Cornelius Brainerd (1811-1884) in 1849. As described in The genealogy of the Brainerd-Brainard family in America, 1649-1908, Vol. II (1908), by Lucy Abigail Brainard:

In his earlier years he was a manufacturer of clocks. He was commissioner on roads and ferries in 1868, and commissioner to the Superior Court about 22 years. He was collector in the Second Congressional District in 1864 and the four years following. He was several years justice of the peace and selectman. He was nominated to the Whig State Convention Dec. 23, 1848. He was a committee to procure recruits in the late Civil War. He was county commissioner in 1855 and ’56. He represented the Nineteenth District in 1867 and ’68 in the Connecticut Senate, and was chairman of the committee on agriculture, on contested elections and on education. He introduced the bill for free schools and through his influence it was passed. He has been called “The father of free schools.” He held many offices in the gift of the people, both local and state wise, and was for a number of years United States deputy collector of internal revenue.

He was a power in politics in the Nineteenth District,clear headed and far seeing, doing good service for the Republican Party. His judgment was good and when followed, success in almost every case resulted. Firm and unyielding as a rock, he was nevertheless a true, tried and trustworthy friend. He never dissembled and never betrayed the trust and confidence placed in him. He was treasurer and director in the Higganum Savings Bank from its establishment, and director in “The Bank of New England,” East Haddam, from 1857 to ’74, inclusive.

Mixer Tavern (1710)

The oldest sections of the Mixer Tavern, a five-bay, wood-frame building at 14 Westford Road [the intersection of Westford Road (CT 89) and Pompey Hollow Road (US 44)] in Ashford, date to 1710, the year John Mixer (born 1667/8) purchased the property and applied for a tavern license. In 1722 he moved to Suffield. From 1757 to 1799, the Tavern was known as Clark’s Tavern, owned and operated by Benjamin Clark. The Marquis de Chastellux and four other French officers of Rochambeau’s army stopped here on November 5, 1782. It was next owned by Joseph Palmer, a doctor and brigadier general in the militia. The Palmer family owned it until 1845. In later years, it was called the General Palmer Inn and the Pompey Hollow Inn. The building has been expanded over the years and underwent restoration in the 1920s and again since then. It is now a private residence.