The house at 222 Saybrook Road, in the Higganum section of Haddam, was built in 1895. It is a good example of a vernacular house that has applied Victorian-era decoration and an Eastlake style porch. Adella Tabor bought the land in 1893 and built the house two years later. In 1908, the house was inherited by two sisters, Ella Virginia Burr and Abby Burr, who both died in 1924. The house was then sold out of the family by their niece, Ruth A. Burr.
According to Portrait of a River Town: The History and Architecture of Haddam, Connecticut (2nd edition, 2001), by Janice P. Cunningham and Elizabeth A. Warner (p.194), the family of Benanuel Bonfoey (1755-1825) is thought to have come to Haddam after the expulsion of the Acadians from the Maritime Provinces of Canada by the British in 1755. Alternatively, one genealogical website indicates that Bonefoy’s father, Benanuel Bonfoey I, was born in Massachusetts in 1731 (or 1720) and served in the French and Indian War. His son, Benanuel Bonfoey II, was born in Haddam in 1755 and married Concurrence Smith (1759-1849) in 1779. Bonfoey was a soldier in the Revolutionary War, serving during the battles in New York state. As related in the Commemorative Biographical Record of Middlesex County, Connecticut (1903):
Benanuel Bonfoey often referred to the of the soldiers at Valley Forge so remarkable in the annals of that great war. He referred with pride to the fact of Gen. Washington’s concern for and care of his men and that he was like a father to the soldiers, cheering or inspiring them with hope as best could
After the war, Bonfoey built the house at 15 Jacoby Road in Haddam. Further west on the road are houses built by his wife’s relatives, members of the Smith family. After his death in 1825, the house was inherited by his son, Benanuel Bonfoey (1802-1894). The Commemorative Biographical Record of Middlesex County describes the construction of the house:
He built the house on Candlewood Hill in which his son, Benanuel, spent his long and useful life, dying at the age of ninety-two; this house is still standing and in use, serving to illustrate the stability with which the old time houses were constructed. When this Bonfoey homestead was built, the solid chimney was first erected, and then after the chimney was completed the house was built around it. The chimney was erected in 1804 and the house in 1808.
Col. Daniel Brainerd (1752-1809), a farmer, built the house at 275 Saybrook Road in the Higganum section of Haddam about 1780. His sons inherited the house, but it was their sister, Zeruah Brainerd (1786-1877), who lived in it until her death. In the early twentieth century, the house was occupied by Owen Brainerd (1865-1919), an architect who worked with Carrere and Hastings of New York. He designed St. Peter’s Roman Catholic Church (now used as a private residence) on Saybrook Road.
James Gladwin (1774-1850), a farmer in the Higganum section of Haddam, purchased a tract of land along what is now Saybrook Road in 1806. Soon thereafter, around 1810, he built the house at 352 Saybrook Road for his new wife, Margaret Tripp. They had twelve children, nine boys and three girls. After Gladwin’s death, the other siblings quitclaimed the house to his youngest daughter, Julia Ann Taylor, wife a Warren Taylor, a farmer who also owned a livery stable. The house was sold out of the family in 1875. Julia Gladwin Taylor later lived in Clinton and died in 1909 at the age of 85.
On December 5, 1776, Capt. John Brainerd (1754-1820) married Hannah Hubbard and soon after erected a house at what is now the corner of Saybrook Road and High Street in Higganum. John’s father, Jabez Brainerd (c. 1713-1778), once lived in a house that stood at the rear of the property. As related in The Genealogy of the Brainerd-Brainard Family in America, 1649-1908, Vol. II (1908), by Lucy Abigail Brainard,
[John Brainerd] was a militia man in the Revolutionary War, and possibly was at White Plains, N.Y. He joined the Regiment Apr. 7, and was disc. May 19, 1777. He was Sergeant in Lieut. Smith’s Company. He was spoken of as Colonel. He was justice of the peace from 1795 to 1804, inclusive. He lived opposite the Higganum Church, which was then a part of Haddam. He was a farmer.
John and Hannah (Hubbard) Brainerd had eleven children. She died in 1795. John married his second wife, Jane Spencer, in 1800. A later resident of the house, from 1839 to 1883, was Selden Usher (1806-1883), a manufacturer who operated an oakum factory on the Higganum River. The house remained in the Usher family until 1948. The property has a historic barn and a privy.
According to Portrait of a River Town: The History and Architecture of Haddam, Connecticut (1984), by Janice P. Cunningham and Elizabeth Ann Warner, the house at 366 Saybrook Road in the Higganum section of Haddam was erected by Heman Brainerd (1754-1803) on land deeded to him in 1784 by his father, Phineas Brainerd (1720-1803), one of the original settlers of Higganum. It was described as a “new Dwelling House” in a 1794 deed, although town acessor’s records date the house to 1729. After the death of Heman’s widow, the house was purchased by James Gladwin and remained in his family for the rest of the nineteenth century. Dr. William H. Tremaine (1815-1883), a noted physician, lived in the house from 1850 to 1857, before he moved to Hartford. The house’s original stairway and chimney, destroyed by fire in the nineteenth century, were rebuilt by its later twentieth century owners.
The house at 372 Saybrook Road in Higganum in Haddam was built in 1815 by Ezra Kelsey (1789-1881), a blacksmith whose shop was at Higganum Landing, where he supplied the shipbuilding industry. The house’s rear ell, which was moved from the edge of the Connecticut River, may date eighteenth century. The house remained in the Kelsey family until 1964. Ezra’s grandson, Horatio Nelson Kelsey, began using the house as a summer home in 1917 and his daughter, Burnette Kelsey (1898-1988), ran Miss Kelsey’s kindergarten in the house from the 1940s to the early 1960s. She sold the house to Richard and Marjorie DeBold, who have maintained such features as the circa-1820 Chinese-themed dining room wallpaper and the beam by the front door, where members of the Kelsey family marked their heights for several generations.
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