The house which serves as a rectory for Christ Church in Guilford was originally built in 1792 for Jared Redfield. It was later occupied by Lorenzo T. Bennett, minister of Christ Church, whose widow later sold the house to the church. The Federal-style house has an off-center doorway and one of the two chimneys is further back than the other.
Samuel Johnson, the first Episcopal clergyman in Connecticut, organized Christ Church in Guilford in 1744. The Episcopalians first used a small church, built in 1748 and located within the bounds of Guilford Green. In 1834, the church was sold, with the proceeds financing the construction, in 1834-1838, of a new Gothic-Revival church with a grandly imposing tower. Local builder William Weld constructed a chancel in 1872 and another addition, for an organ, was built in 1890.
On Boston Street in Guilford is a 1764 gambrel-roofed house built by Ebenezer Hopson. In 1789, Rev. Jesse Lee preached the the first Methodist sermon in Guilford in the Hopson House. The home’s Greek Revival doorway was added around 1841.
James A. Norton, a prominent citizen in Guilford, who served on many town committees, built his house in the Italianate style on Fair Street in 1856. A later owner, for over six decades, was John Pitts, who lived to be a hundred. There is a modern addition to the rear which matches the style of the original part of the house. The house is currently for sale.
The First Congregational Church in Guilford dates back to 1639, when Rev. Henry Whitfield and his followers sailed from England to New Haven and settled the town of Guilford, then part of New Haven Colony. They had drawn up a covenant on shipboard during their journey to America. The town’s first meeting house, a small stone building with a thatched roof, was soon built on Guilford Green, replaced in 1713 by a new church, said to have been the first in Connecticut to have a steeple clock and bell. In the early nineteenth century there was a movement to clear the Green of buildings. The current church was then built in 1830, on a site overlooking the Green. The Hurricane of 1938 toppled the original steeple, which was rebuilt the following year.
Nut Plains is a section of Guilford, named for the abundant hazelnuts found there by early colonial settlers. Before the establishment of the Boston Post Road through Guilford, a seventeenth century thoroughfare crossed East River at Foote’s Bridge Road in lower Nut Plains, where one of the last unpaved sections of the original New York to Boston carriage road survives today. In this neighborhood is the house built in 1810-1811 by Col. George Foote. Although the house has an address of 829 Goose Lane, it’s front facade faces Foote’s Bridge Road. George Foote farmed on the property of his grandfather, General Andrew Ward, and replaced the old Ward farmhouse with his new Federal-style home. This earlier house once stood on the current site of the front yard of 829 Goose Lane and its history was linked to a number of notable individuals.
Colonel Andrew Ward IV purchased a farm in nut plains in 1740. He fought in the French and Indian War and was at the Siege of Fort Louisbourg. Col Ward‘s son, Andrew Ward V, was also at the battle, and later rose to the rank of general in the Revolutionary War. He inherited lands from his father and lived in the old farmhouse. His eldest daughter, Roxana, had married Eli Foote, who died leaving his widow penniless with ten children. Roxana and the children, one of whom was Col. George Foote, came to live on their grandfather Andrew Ward’s farm and the farmhouse came to be called “Castle Ward” by the children. Gen. Ward also laid out the the private Foote Cemetery at Sandy Knoll. The cultured Ward-Foote family hosted many guests, including the young poet, Fitz-Greene Halleck, and the Rev. Lyman Beecher, who married Gen. Ward’s granddaughter, named Roxana after her mother. Lyman and Roxana Foote Beecher‘s famous children included Rev. Henry Ward Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe. After the death of her mother, the five-year-old Harriet Beecher was brought to stay at the Nut Plains farm by her aunt, Harriet Foote–the first of many happy visits there over the years.
The Italianate house of Daniel Hand, at 47 Fair Street in Guilford, was built in 1878-1879 by the builders George W. Seward and Sons. Daniel Hand, born in Madison, was a businessman and philanthropist, who died in 1891 at the age of ninety. Please Read on to learn more about what happened to Hand during the Civil War and his act of generosity 25 years later: