The Samuel Seymour House (1784)

The house at 74 South Street in Litchfield is described by Alice T. Bulkeley in Historic Litchfield, 1721-1907 (1907) as follows:

The Seymour house, now St. Michael’s rectory, was built in 1784 by Samuel Seymour, the brother of Major Moses Seymour, who lived there until his death in the early nineteenth century. The south wing was added about twenty or twenty-five years ago. The southeast room on the second floor was used by Calhoun when a law student. Samuel Seymour was a prominent resident of the town and a captain in the militia. He was famous for sharpening razors, and every morning the other members of the Seymour family used to come to his house where they kept their razors, and all shave at the same time. The house was bought in 1860 by Clarissa Seymour, widow of Rev. Truman Marsh, who gave it to St. Michael’s Church for a rectory.

Milton Congregational Church (1791)

Begun in 1791, the interior of the Milton Congregational Church was not completed until 1841. The church was built on Milton Green by the Third Ecclesiastical Society of Litchfield and passed to the Milton Ecclesiastical Society in 1795, which established the Milton Congregational Presbyterian Church in 1798. The church was at that time painted yellow and it was decided to move the building, considered by some to be a disfigurement of the Green, across the river. It was therefre moved to its present location in 1828 onto land donated by Asa Morris. The building’s Greek Revival features were added at that time and the cupola was built in 1843. The church was without central heating until 1996, when the building was temporarily moved off its foundation while a new foundation was being poured.

The Laurens P. Hickok House (1831)

Laurens Perseus Hickok served as minister at Litchfield’s First Congregational Church from 1829 to 1836. His early published addresses include The Sources of Military Delusion and the Practicability of their Removal (1833) and A Sermon Preached at Litchfield, Conn., at the Funeral of Col. Benjamin Tallmadge, March 12, 1835. Hickok was later a professor and wrote such works as Rational Psychology (1849), A System of Moral Science (1853), Empirical Psychology (1854), Rational Cosmology (1858), Creator and Creation (1872), Humanity Immortal (1872), and The Logic of Reason (1875). Built in 1831, his Greek Revival house is located at 134 North Street in Litchfield.

The Ludlow Bull House (1828)

The house at 114 North Street in Litchfield was built in 1828 by Leonard Goodwin, a trustee of the Litchfield Female Academy. Ludlow Bull purchased the house in 1925 and in 1928 he completely remodeled it as his summer home in the Colonial Revival style. Ludlow Seguine Bull (1886–1954) was an Egyptologist who started Yale’s Egyptology program and was an associate curator of Ancient Egyptian Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Ethan Allen Birthplace (1736)

Happy New Year!!! Our first building of 2011 is the birthplace of a hero of the American Revolution. Ethan Allen led the Green Mountain Boys in the capture of Fort Ticonderoga and then served in the American military expedition against Canada in 1775. Although famous as a champion of statehood for Vermont, with a Homestead that can be visited in Burlington VT, Allen was born on January 21, 1738 in Litchfield CT. In 1740, his parents Joseph and Mary Allen, moved the family from the Litchfield house, built in 1736, to a new farm in Cornwall. Ethan took over the farm after his father’s death in 1755 and later struck out on his own, establishing a charcoal blast furnace in Salisbury in 1761. He eventually settled in Vermont, having purchased land in the area then known as the New Hampshire Grants. Ethan Allen also wrote a book, Reason: the Only Oracle of Man, first published in 1784.