It is likely that the house at 320 Baileyville Road in Middlefield was erected c. 1755. It is thought to have been built for William Ward IV, a farmer (although he was born in 1767). In the 1740s, Ward’s father, William Ward III (also known as William Ward, Jr.), built a nearly identical house nearby, at 137 Powder Hill Road. In 1862, William Ward IV’s heirs sold the house on Baileyville Road to James O. Ross. The house is now part of Country Flower Farms.
At 116–118 Way Road in Middlefield is a Greek Revival-style house, originally erected circa 1846 as a two-family house by Watrous I. Miller (1822-1885) and William P. Abel (1811-1848), on land the former had acquired from his father Jeremiah the year before. In 1846 Watrous sold the property to his brother Isaac W. Miller (1819-1891), with Abel (who was Watrous and Isaac’s brother-in-law) retaining a half interest in the house. The western wing of the house may have functioned as a tin shop used by Isaac, who was a tinsmith.
In 1762, John Wetmore of Middlefield married his first cousin, Lois (a not uncommon practice among eighteenth-century farming families seeking to keep holdings within a larger family network). Circa 1780, the couple erected a house on land in Middlefield, owned by John’s father, Deacon Caleb Wetmore (1706-1788) who, unusually for the time, deeded the land to his niece and daughter-in-law Lois in 1786. The couple later deeded the property to their son, Captain John Wetmore, but during the 1790s, when Connecticut farmers were facing difficult times, he moved to Litchfield, where he died in 1847, and his brothers, Josiah, Azariah and James moved to Ohio. In eleven years the property had five different owners, but was them purchased by Jacob Miller and remained in his family until the early twentieth century. Located at 18 Maple Street, the Wetmore-Miller House has an early-twentieth century Colonial Revival entry portico.
At 123 Main Street in the Rockfall district of Middlefield is a Greek Revival house built between 1845 and 1847. It is unusual in that the entrance is on the west side of the house instead of on the front facade that faces the street. Originally, there was also a door on the east side. The multiple entrances provided access to what was built as a boarding house for workers employed at the mills along the Coginchaug River. Now a two-family house, the building was erected by William F. Boardman, who also built another boarding house just to the west.
The house at 326 Jackson Hill Road in Middlefield was built c. 1828, but is associated with Hezekiah Hale, Jr., who died in 1826. His father, Hezekiah Hale, Sr., was a sexton of the Congregational Church and kept a record of the dead from 1761 to 1814 that was included in Thomas Atkins’ History of Middlefield and Long Hill (1883). In 1805, Hezekiah Hale, Jr. (1778-1826) married Nancy Miller, a descendant of Thomas Miller, one of the original proprietors of Middletown.
From the mid-nineteenth century, pistols were being manufactured in the Rockfall section of Middlefield in a factory begun by Henry Aston, Ira N. Johnson, Sylvester Bailey, John North and others. The pistol factory burned down in 1879. As related in the History of Middlefield and Long Hill (1883), by Thomas Atkins,
By the burning of the pistol factory Mr. Otis Smith, who was at that time doing quite an extensive business there, lost machinery, tools, stock, and goods. Nothing was saved. In Nov., 1880, Mr. Smith again began manufacturing in P. W. Bennett’s factory, where he remained until July, 1882. In Dec, 1881, he purchased of Ira N. Johnson, the pistol factory property, and erected thereon a three-story brick building, 100 feet long by 30 feet wide, and is now manufacturing a pistol of his own invention known as the “Smith’s revolver;” also several patented articles in the hardware line.
Eight years before he constructed his new factory, which in recent years was restored and converted into a residence by owner Dick Boynton, Otis Smith erected his family residence at 135 Main Street. The French Second Empire-style house and adjacent carriage house were built in 1873. The long Colonial Revival front was probably added in the in the first twenty years of the twentieth century. Smith died in 1924 and the following year his heirs sold the house to Franc and Lillie Rodowic. (more…)
On the western edge of the village of Rockfall in Middlefield is a Greek Revival house at 51 Derby Road at the corner of Main Street. The house was erected c. 1840 by Lewis Miller, who had acquired the land in 1836 from Jane W. Baldwin. Lewis was the son of Giles Miller and the grandson of Deacon Giles Miller, an early settler of the area. The house remained in the Miller family until 1893.
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