At 113-119 Maple Street in Ellington is a house built in 1835 with Italianate decorative features that were added later. A large second-floor room, known as the Conference Room, was used by the local Baptist Church when it was founded in the 1840s. This church appears not to have continued to the present day, as the current Ellington Baptist Church was established in 1993 by members who had been previously attending the Somers Baptist Church.
Built in 1831, the Thomas Chapman House is a late example of a Federal-style residence at 114 Main Street in Ellington. The house has a long rear ell.
Rev. John McKinstry (1677-1754) was the first minister of Ellington’s Congregational Church. His house, most likely the oldest in Ellington, was built in 1730 and was moved to its present address at 85 Maple Street in 1815 from north of where the Hall Memorial Library was later built.
On page 34 of the volume by Lynn Kloter Fahy on Ellington in the Images of America series (Arcadia Publishing, 2005) is an image of the John Robinson House, 107 Maple Street, taken c. 1910. The image shows that the house, built in 1890, once had many more features of the Queen Anne style, including decorative trim and a front porch. The house does retain its original pyramidal roof. Behind the house was Robinson’s blacksmith shop.
The Lucius Chapman House, at 87 Maple Street in Ellington, was built in 1834. It has a later Italianate entrance porch. As related in “Ellington, ” by Alice E. Pinney (The Connecticut Magazine, Vol. IV, No. 2, 1898):
About the beginning of the present century the business of the town changed its location again to a point on the old turnpike a mile east of the present center, near the junction with the road leading to Stafford, where a thriving store was kept in an old red gambrel-roofed house by Dr. James Steele of Tolland. Although he bore the professional title of doctor, he is recorded as being a merchant and a farmer. He died in 1819. Lucius Chapman is said to have kept the store from 1825 until 1856. when he sold out and went West and the place was abandoned for store purposes.
As noted by Henry Willey in Isaac Willey of New London, Conn., and His Descendants (1888), Rebecca Willey, daughter of Asa and Rebecca Wass Willey, was born in 1798 and in 1830 married
Lucius Chapman, a merchant of Ellington, Conn. They removed to Illinois, and were living there in 1861.
The house at 36 Main Street in Ellington was built around 1750 by Charles Ellsworth. He was the grandson of Lt. John Ellsworth, who came to Ellington from East Windsor and passed away there in 1720.
Nelson Cheffee was an architect who built a number of Greek Revival houses along Main Street in Ellington. Pictured above is the house at 108 Main Street, built in 1839. I’m not sure if the architect Nelson Chaffee is the Nelson E. Chaffee (1807-1870) who patented an improvement in drying machines in 1849. (more…)
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