The house at 2082 Main Street in Glastonbury was built in 1745 for Nathaniel Talcott (a stone in its foundation has the date 1745 and the initials NT). Nathaniel Talcott served as Captain of the militia, was in the General Assembly and was town assessor.
Joseph Wright was a prosperous farmer in Glastonbury. He kept detailed diaries for over 30 years that are an important source for Glastonbury history. His house, at 2033 Main Street, was built in 1808. According to tradition, two bricklayers worked on each half of the house and when they got to the middle of the front facade, they discovered that their work did not line up. This is why the brickwork above the front door does not line up today. The house’s ell is part of an earlier Wright family home that was located on Wrights Island in the Connecticut River.
At 2038 Main Street in Glastonbury is the gambrel-roofed Roswell Goodrich House. Roswell was a descendant of William Goodrich, an early settler of Wethersfield. William purchased land in what is now Glastonbury in 1646, on which his descendents later built homes. The house at 2030 Main Street was built about 1760 by Captain John Goodrich (pdf) and the one at 2038 was built about 1789 by Roswell, son of Captain John’s younger brother David Goodrich. Roswell married Rachael Stevens, a descendent of Rev. Timothy Stevens , Glastonbury’s first minister (his house is at 1808 Main Street). Their son Israel, who later bought the house at 2030 Main Street, was a farmer who played the violin and also taught a dancing school.
St. James’ Episcopal Church was established in North Glastonbury in 1857 and the church at 2584 Main Street was built in 1859. The interior was gutted by fire in 1904, but the church was able to reopen for services within one year. The building was enlarged in 1965 and in 1978 a parcel of town redevelopment land was purchased to become a parking lot and major repairs were made to the church and parish house (the latter built in 1956). (more…)
In 1806, Episcopalians in Nayaug (South Glastonbury) established an Episcopal Society and built a church in 1812-13. The church was officially consecrated as St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in 1821 and served as a church until a new church was consecrated in 1838. The old church was sold and became a school. It was moved further down Main Street in 1860 and was torn down in 1933. The 1838 church is still in use, with few modern modifications to the original structure.
Dating to around 1790, the Griswold-Moseley House, at 1936 Main Street in Glastonbury, was built by Thomas White Griswold, a farmer. In 1798, the Griswold family sold the house to Capt. Joseph Moseley and moved to upstate New York. The house remained in the Moseley family into the twentieth century.
The Welles-Chapman Tavern, on Main Street in Glastonbury, was moved from the west to the east side of the street in 1974, when the Glastonbury bank expanded. In the late-eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the tavern was the stop-over for coaches traveling between Hartford and New London. The tavern (which was also the town’s first post office) was built in 1776 by Joseph Welles. It was purchased by Azel Chapman in 1808. Today, it is owned by the Historical Society of Glastonbury, who have rented it out to a number of tenants, currently the Glastonbury Chamber of Commerce.
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