Canton Center General Store (1830)

The building at 180 Cherry Brook Road in Canton Center originally stood on the bank of Cherry Brook where it was built in 1830 by Norman Case as a woodworking shop. A flood in 1870 destroyed the stone dam on which this and other manufacturing operations in the vicinity depended. In 1874, Giles Sisson converted the carpenter shop’s upper floor into a social hall. The following year, brothers Austin and Myron Skinner of Middletown were persuaded by Rev. D. B. Hubbard of Canton Center’s Congregational Church to open a general store on the ground floor. The store has had many owners over the last century and a half. In 1886, while it was owned by George Lamphier, Sr., the store was moved east from Cherry Brook to its current location along Cherry Brook Road.

Capt. John Brown House (1776)

The house at 37 West Road in Canton was built in 1776 by Capt. John Brown III (1728-1776) to replace his earlier log cabin that stood west of the current house. As related in the 1860 book The Public Life of Capt. John Brown, by James Redpath:

John Brown, the third, at the outbreak of the revolutionary war, was chosen Captain of the West Simsbury (now Canton) trainband; and, in the spring of 1776, joined forces of the continental army at New York. His commission from Governor Trumbull is dated May 23, 1776. After a service of two months’ duration, he fell a victim to the prevailing epidemic of the camp, at the age of 48 years. He died in a barn, attended only by a faithful subordinate, a few miles north of New York City, where the continental army was at that time encamped. His body was buried on the Highlands, near the western bank of the East River.

Capt. Brown’s youngest son Abiel, who continued to live in the house until his death in 1856, wrote the book Genealogical History, with Short Sketches and Family Records, of the Early Settlers of West Simsbury, now Canton, Conn. (1856). Abiel’s brother Owen moved to Torrington and was the father of abolitionist John Brown. The younger John Brown later moved a monument to his grandfather, that once stood in the lot across the street from the house across from the house in Canton, to his farm in North Elba, New York. Brown was executed in 1859 and he was buried on his New York farm where his grave is marked by the same stone.

The house in Canton has a modern ell, shown on the right in the image above.

Neri Case House (1848)

The house at 529 Cherry Brook Road in Canton was erected circa 1848 by Neri Case (1803-1890). In the 1869 Atlas of Hartford and Tolland Counties the house is labeled as the property of L. Case. This was Lucius Case (1819-1894), Neri’s son-in-law. From 1937 until 1958, the house served as the North Canton post office. At the time it was the residence of Mrs. Ruth Vining Gracy, who was the postmaster. She continued in that role after the current North Canton Post Office building at 531 Cherry Brook Road was opened in 1958, retiring in 1967. The post office had previously been located in the Adams House at 4 West Simsbury Road, the previous postmaster being Gracy’s aunt, Mary Vining Adams. Gracy was active in the Cherry Brook Grange and the North Canton Methodist Church. She wrote a poem about the wedding of Dorothy Bahre and Richard Wright on Christmas Eve, 1939 when the church caught fire! She also wrote historical articles in the magazine The Lure of the Litchfield Hills about the church and the North Canton schools. Her son Forrest Gracy served as a U.S. Marine in the South Pacific during World War II.

John Moses House (1745)

According to the Sesquicentennial History of the Town of Canton, published in 1956, the house at 516 Cherry Brook Road was known as Fool’s Paradise. It was built in about 1745 by John Moses. The Sesquicentennial History claims that the North Canton Burying Ground was located on his premises and that his two-year-old daughter Eunice was the first to be buried there in 1754. Other sources note that the cemetery was a gift of Peter Curtiss of West Simsbury (which then included Canton) in 1744 and that the first burial there was in 1756. The house has a modern addition erected in 1983.

Giles Sisson House (1867)

The property at 121 West Road in Canton was settled in about 1738 by Sgt. Thomas Barber with his widowed mother and three brothers. In 1867, Giles A. Sisson (1832-1900) tore down a house on the property that had been erected by Deacon Hosea Case and replaced it with the current Greek Revival-style farmhouse. In addition to operating the farm, Sisson had a cider mill just south of his house and had a sawmill about a quarter of a mile north on Cherry Brook. From 1874 to 1880 Sisson owned the Canton Center General Store at 180 Cherry Brook Road, during which time he converted that building’s upper floor into a social hall. In about 1920, the farm on West Road was acquired by Otto Freeland, who was born in Sweden. There was once a windmill on that property that was occasionally used to generate electricity for the milling of ax handles. These were then sold to the Collins Company.

Jesse Barber House (1800)

The house at 259 Cherry Brook Road in Canton was built sometime before 1800 (an chestnut beam in the attic is inscribed with the date 1789). It was the home of Jesse Barber, a cobbler who had a shop north of his house and also a tannery. He would fix the shoes of the children who walked by his home on their way to school. For many years the house’s residents got their water from a spring on the hill to the east which traveled through a system of split and grooved logs laid end-to-end. This was later replaced by a lead pipe that had to be kept unfrozen in the winter to prevent clogging. New owners, Dennis and Wanda Mahoney, replaced this system with an artesian well in 1953. They also extensively restored the house and totally rebuilt the rear ell. An earlier owner, Ambrose Norman, had kept riding horses, but gave up the house to a grain merchant from Granby to satisfy an unpaid feed bill.

Cherry Brook Kennels (1742)

The oldest section of the house at 490 Cherry Brook Road in Canton may date back to 1740s, when the land was owned by Thomas Phelps, the earliest known settler on the site, whose brother Benjamin may also have lived with him. Thomas’ grandson was Anson G. Phelps, the New York businessman who founded the town of Ansonia. For many years, going back at least to the 1950s, the property was home to Rusthall Kennels, and is now Cherry Brook Kennels.