Groton

Amos C. Tift House (1851)

Amos C. Tift, who died at Mystic. Connecticut, at the age of seventy-six in 1883, was a merchant by occupation and had exceptional business capacity. He was quite well known in the South, especially at Key West, Florida.

So writes Lucian Lamar Knight in A Standard History of Georgia and Georgians, Vol. 6 (1917). Amos Chapman Tift of Mystic is mentioned in a book about Georgia because his son, Henry Harding Tift, was the founder of Tifton, in Tift County, Georgia. The county, created in 1905, was named for Nelson Tift, a brother of Amos, who had settled in Georgia, become a successful entrepreneur and politician, and founded the city of Albany in 1835. Henry H. Tift joined his uncle‘s company and later founded Tifton when he opened a sawmill there in 1872. He was involved in many business ventures and was a philanthropist dedicated to promoting education. As the book quoted above explains:

He was a man who, realizing the great wealth of natural resources not only in timber but in agricultural lines, established sawmills, built railroads, caused the establishment of agricultural experiment stations, colonized the country with sturdy and thrifty farmers, and lent his personal agency and his material resources to the steady development of this portion of the state.

The Amos C. Tift House, which was the childhod home of Henry Harding Tift, was built around 1851 on High Street in Mystic. Henry H. Tift’s later house in Tifton, built in 1887, is part of the Georgia Agrirama, an agricultural and historical museum village.

Charles Merritt House (1855)

The unusual granite Greek Revival home of Charles Merritt is on Monument Street in Groton Bank. It was most likely built by the same Charles Merritt who was a stonecutter in Groton and was in business with John Salter and Robert A. Gray, the latter of whom won the Medal of Honor in the Civil War. They had a quarry on Thames Street.

Capt. James Monroe Buddington House (1854)

The 1854 Greek Revival home (with later Victorian additions) of Captain James Monroe Buddington, is on Monument Street in the Groton Bank neighborhood of Groton. Capt. Buddington was a whaling captain, famous for his recovery of the HMS Resolute. The Resolute was a British ship that, in 1852, was part of a four ship expedition sent to the Arctic to investigate the fate of the lost John Franklin Expedition, which had been searching for the Northwest Passage to Asia. The Resolute became lodged in ice in the Canadian Arctic and in 1854, after a year-and-a-half of being trapped, the ship was abandoned by her crew. Capt. Buddington, on the whaling ship George Henry, found the deserted Resolute, which had become freed from the ice and was drifting, having traveled nearly 1200 miles! He sailed the lost ship back to New London, arriving on Christmas Day, 1855. The US government restored the ship, which was returned to Britain and presented to Queen Victoria amid much fanfare. The Resolute would continue in service until 1879. When she was decommissioned, Queen Victoria had several desks made from her timbers and one was presented to President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1880. The famed Resolute Desk has been used by many presidents since then, frequently as the President’s desk in the Oval Office.

Groton Battle Monument (1830)

The Groton Battle Monument commemorates the Battle of Groton Heights, fought during the Revolutionary War on September 6, 1781. The battle was a result of the British raid on New London, led by Benedict Arnold. Fort Trumbull, on the New London side of the harbor, and Fort Griswold, built on the heights on the Groton side, were built to protect the strategic port of New London. Arnold had information from an American turncoat which enabled the British to avoid the fire from Fort Griswold‘s guns and surprise the Americans. The British forces then burned New London and, after a fierce battle, in which 150 rapidly assembled American defenders faced a British force of 800, Fort Griswold was captured. The American commander, Col. William Ledyard, is said to have been killed by his own sword after surrendering to the British. According to American sources, a massacre of the Americans followed the surrender, although British sources mention neither the death of Col. Ledyard or a massacre.

Today, the remains of Fort Griswold are part of a Connecticut State Park. Also on the park grounds are the Monument House Museum and the Groton Battle Monument. The Monument is a granite obelisk, constructed between 1826 and 1830. It is the oldest monument of its kind in America, preceding the Bunker Hill Monument and the Washington Monument. The Groton Monument has a marble plaque listing the names of those who fell defending Fort Griswold. In 1881, the centennial anniversary year of the battle, the top of the monument was enclosed and its height raised to 134 feet. Visitors to Fort Griswold can climb the tower and reenactments of the battle are also held at the Park.

Bill Memorial Library (1890)

The Bill Memorial Library in Groton, adjacent to Fort Griswold Battlefield State Park, was founded by Frederic Bill, a publisher and linen goods manufacturer, who was born in the part of Groton which is now the town of Ledyard and who retired to a farm in Groton on the Thames River. The library, dedicated to the memory of Bill’s sisters, Eliza and Harriet, began in 1888, as a room in Groton’s First District Schoolhouse. The Bill Library building, designed by the Worcester architect, Stephen C. Earle, was dedicated in 1890. Bill expanded the library in 1907, enlarging the main reading room and providing space for a natural history museum. The library was again expanded in 1994. After the death of his first wife, in 1894, Bill married Julia 0. Avery, the libary’s first librarian.