At 1278 Main Street in Glastonbury is a center-chimney house built c. 1784 by Colonel John Hale. A 1789 deed conveyed the property from Deacon David Hale (1727-1796) to his son, Col. John Hale, whose house had already been built. Col. John Hale (1759-1817) served in the state General Assembly from 1796 to 1799 and as Glastonbury Town Clerk from 1804-1817.
Its steeply pitched roof makes the Laurilla Smith Cottage, at 1626 Main Street in Glastonbury, a distinctive building. The cottage was planned in 1853 by Laurilla Aleroyla Smith (1789-1857) and finished after her death by her family in 1857 as a memorial to her. An artist, Laurilla A. Smith was a student at Sarah Pierce’s Female Academy in Litchfield and later taught at at Emma Willard’s School in Troy, N.Y. and Catharine Beecher’s Hartford Female Seminary. She was the sister of Julia and Abby Smith, the famous activists who lived in Kimberly Mansion, the house across the street. Smith had planned for the cottage to be her art studio. It is now used by artist Harry White.
William Miller III (born in 1659 in Northampton, Mass.), a farmer, settled in Glastonbury on land his father had purchased in 1660. Miller married Mary Bushnell of Old Saybrook in 1693. He built the house at 1855 Main Street in 1704 (the date and his initials were carved on the kitchen door latch) and died a year later.
Various dates have been given for the Federal/Greek Revival house at 2146 Main Street in Glastonbury. Some claim 1780, while the Historical Society of Glastonbury records give 1850/1851. Notable for its tin roof, it is known as the Talcott-Hollister House. Replacing an earlier Talcott Homestead, torn down in 1850, it was built the following year by Jared Talcott. It was next home to his son, Capt. Charles H. Talcott, and later to Charles‘ daughter Charlotte and her husband, Norman E. Hollister (1845-1923).
Built to replace an earlier schoolhouse on the same site, the Glastonbury’s former Second District School was constructed at 2252 Main Street in 1906. The two-story Colonial Revival hip-roofed building was used as a school until 1930. It served as Glstonbury’s Town Hall until 1960 and is now a law office.
The house at 1846 Main Street in Glastonbury was built in 1786 for Matthew Miller, the grandson of William Miller, whose 1704 house is nearby at 1855 Main Street. A brick from the house’s chimney bears the impression of both sides of a Piece of Eight, a Spanish coin. It was probably a ballast brick, carried on a ship traveling from South America or the West Indies. The brick is on display at Glastonbury’s Museum on the Green.
The First Church of Christ, Congregational in Glastonbury has had five church buildings since it was established in the 1690s. As related in Vol. 2 of the Memorial History of Hartford County (1886), the first meeting house was erected on the Green in 1693:
It was enlarged in 1706, and stood until destroyed by fire on the night of Dec. 9, 1734. The second meeting-house, by compromise between the north and south, and by the decision of the General Court, was erected on the main street, about one fourth of a mile south of the Green, standing half in the street, just north of the old Moseley tavern. […] It was used as a church for more than a century, having been built in 1735. On the division of the society in 1836, by the establishment of the society at South Glastonbury, it was abandoned as a meeting-house, and during the year 1837 was demolished. […] By the division of the First Society in 1836, and the dilapidation of its ancient edifice, a new meeting-house became a necessity for the mother organization, and it was so voted in society’s meeting January 17, 1837. This was located farther to the north, on land which in 1640 was owned by the Rev. Henry Smith, the first settled minister of Wethersfield (from 1641 to 1648), and later (in 1684) by Samuel Hale, the ancestor of the Hale family. It was built in 1837, under the supervision of David Hubbard, Josiah B. Holmes, George Plummer, Benjamin Hale, and Ralph Carter, as a building committee. It was a very tasteful edifice, with tower, bell, and clock, especially attractive after its enlargement and thorough repair in 1858, which made it a most fitting and beautiful sanctuary. It was burned on the morning of Sunday, Dec. 23, 1866. The church which takes its place was erected in the year following, and with its graceful spire (rebuilt in 1880) forms a prominent object in the views of the valley.
This last church was destroyed in the hurricane of 1938, when the steeple crashed down into the sanctuary. The current church was built the following year on the same site.
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