The 1800 Benton-Hale House, on Main Street in Glastonbury, was built by Samuel Benton when he married Fanny Talcott. In 1838, the house was acquired by Frary Hale, “said to have been the first woolen manufacturer in Connecticut; he lived 90 years.” He also served as town clerk, 1848-1850. The house’s rear ell may be an earlier structure.
The Gideon Welles House, on Hebron Avenue in Glastonbury, was built in 1783 by Samuel Welles, a Revolutionary War captain, for his son of the same name, who had married Anna Hale in 1782. The most famous member of the Welles family to live in the house was Gideon Welles, who was born there in 1802 and would become Lincoln’s Secretary of the Navy during the Civil War. The house was inherited by Gideon‘s brother Thaddeus Welles, but Gideon Welles made a notable return visit in 1864 for the funeral of his nephew, who had been a casualty of the war. During the visit, Welles sat on the porch with Admiral David G. Farragut to plan what would become the successful Union victory at the Battle of Mobile Bay. Gideon Welles had been living in a house on Linden Place in Hartford before the Civil War and later lived in a house on Charter Oak Place. Welles also wrote about his time in Lincoln’s cabinet in his book, Lincoln and Seward and in his posthumously published diary.
The house was lived in by members of the Welles family until 1932. It was originally located where the Welles-Chapman Tavern now stands, but was going to be demolished in 1935 to make way for a Post Office. Dr. Lee J. Whittles and others in town formed a committee to save the house and in 1936, Ernest Victor Llewellyn purchased the house and moved it to a neighboring lot on the New London Turnpike (Hebron Avenue). This committee would eventually become the Historical Society of Glastonbury. In 1974, the house was again moved further up Hebron Avenue to become a Senior Center. Still owned by the town today, the building now houses businesses and shops.
The house built for Benjamin Taylor, a Hartford merchant, on Main Street in Glastonbury in 1830, represents a transition from the Federal to the Greek Revival styles, but is still primarily Federal. The property had earlier been owned by Abraham Phelps, a blacksmith whose shop was located behind the building. For many years the building housed the Blacksmith’s Tavern, during which time the elaborate staircase was added. The restaurant closed in 1997 and the building now houses offices.
Also today, two new entries have been added to Historic Buildings of Massachusetts: The Nathaniel Hawthorne Birthplace and the Old State House.
Built around 1740, the Timothy Hale, Jr. House is located on Main Street in Glastonbury. It was built by Timothy, Jr. on part of a parcel of land bought by his father. Hale was in the Connecticut militia during the Revolutionary War, serving as a Captain in 6th Regiment.
John Goodrich was a descendant early Glastonbury settlers. His house, on Main Street in Glastonbury, was built in 1760. After his death, his daughters sold it to a cousin, Israel Goodrich. In 1806, the year he married Harriet Miller, he modernized the interior, reducing the size of the original kitchen fireplace. The home is currently for sale.
Kimberly Mansion, on Main Street in Glastonbury, was built sometime in the early eighteenth century by Eleazer Kimberly, a Secretary of the Connecticut Colony. It was purchased in 1790 by Zephaniah Smith, a former Sandemanian minister, who had become a lawyer. He added an addition to the house, with a separate entrance, to serve as his law office. He and his wife, Hannah Hickok , an amateur mathematician and poet, would raise five talented daughters in the house: Hancy, an inventor; Laurilla, an artist; Cyrinthia, a poet; and Julia and Abby, who would become famous political activists in the nineteenth century. Julia was also a scholar who, in 1876, published the first translation of the Bible into English by a woman.
Although they were involved, together with their mother, in Abolitionism in the years before the Civil War, Julia and Abby Smith became known throughout the country in the early 1870s for their stand against the unfair assessment of their land by the Glastonbury tax collector. By this time, the two unmarried elderly sisters were the only survivors of their family and owned the most valuable property in town, but as women they could not vote and so were taxed without representation. They therefore refused to pay taxes until they were granted a say in the use of their money. The tax man then seized and auctioned off their cows to pay the taxes. This incident, and other confrontations that followed, were extensively covered in contemporary newspapers and the sisters became prominent in Women’s Suffrage circles. After two years of legal wrangling, they would eventually win a court judgment in 1876, but not the vote. After Abby’s death, Julia finally married and moved to New Hampshire, at the age of 87!
The Congregational Church in South Glastonbury was constructed on High Street in 1836 by 14 members of Glastonbury’s First Church. After the Great Hurricane of 1938, the other two Congregational churches in town had to be rebuilt, so South Church is the oldest surviving Congregational church in town. The building was raised and turned to face Main Street in 1965. (more…)
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