The house at 107 State Street in Guilford was built in 1787 in the Federal style and has a later Greek Revival entryway. The house was built by two brothers, Samuel and Thomas Scranton, who were both farmers. It would become home to the brothers, their wives and their combined total of nine surviving children. It was inherited by Thomas Scranton, Jr.
The house at 62 Cook Hill Road in Cheshire was built c. 1740, with a wing added in the twentieth century. The house is called “The C.B. Bradley House” in Edwin R. Brown’s Old Historic Homes of Cheshire (1895). Brown writes:
This house was built by Moses Bradley, and is about 140 years old. Here, Oliver, a son, Columbus, a grandson, and Charles B., a great-grandson, resided. In this house, Stephen Rowe Bradley, a son of Moses, was born Oct. 20, 1754, and here he spent his youthful days. As a boy, he was full of mischief, and seemed naturally inclined to play tricks on others. On the turnpike, but a few rods across the lot, Moses Peck lived, in an old-fashioned, lean-tn house. One night, when the family was absent, young Bradley selected this place for one of his exploits.
Inducing other boys to join him, he took the owner’s cart, which was left in the yard, near the house, separated the parts, and, as the back roof reached to within a few feet of the ground, with the aid of ropes, he drew up to the top of the roof, first, the neap and axle, and then, in the same manner, the wheels, and then the body. These separate parts were all put together on the top of the roof, one wheel being stationed on the west roof, and the other on the east, the neap resting on the ridge boards. They then drew up in baskets a sufficient quantity of wood to fill the body of the cart. So that an ox-cart, literally filled with wood, was plainly visible on the top of this house the next morning.
The owner, Mr. Peck, upon his return home, missing his woodpile and seeing other evidence of mischief, made inquiries of his neighbors, who called his attention to the exhibition on the housetop. Mr. Peck at once exclaimed, “Those cussed boys! I’ll fix ’em! I know very well who done it.” Stephen was watching the proceedings from a window in his father’s house with evident delight. This element of mischief seemed to grow as the years increased, and his father came to the conclusion that he could do nothing with him at home, so he decided to send him to Yale College. He at once commenced his preparatory studies under the instruction of the Reverend John Foote. He entered Yale College in the year 1772. As a student at Yale, the elements of sport and mischief in his nature did not lie dormant, but were manifested on several occasions, of which we have record and which evince his natural shrewdness.
[. . .]
Stephen Rowe Bradley graduated at Yale, in the year 1775, with honors. He afterward settled in Vermont, and became one of the most popular men of that State. He was elected to the United States Senate in 1802, and continued a member for 16 years. He was prseident [sic] of this body in 1802, in 1803 in place of Aaron Burr, and in 1808 and 1809 in place of George Clinton. He died at Walpole, N. H., in 1830. aged 75 years.
A remarkable career! Youthful activity, finding expression in mischief, as a boy, became the source of energy and power in mature life.
Methodists in Norwich first organized in 1796. They built the city’s first Methodist Episcopal Church in the Bean Hill neighborhood in 1831-1833. As explained by Edgar F. Clark in The Methodist Episcopal Churches of Norwich, Conn. (1867):
The name of the Church Society, as appears in the minutes, was first called “Norwich;” in 1834, “Norwich North,” which appellation it has very generally retained. In local conversation, it is often called “Bean Hill,” from its locality.
Before erecting their church, the Society met in the Old Academy building, as described in Frances Manwaring Caulkins’ History of Norwich (1874):
The Methodist society on Bean Hill for many years held their public services in the venerable building which had served successively and alternately for a classical academy, a free school, and a Separatist conventicle. In this extemporized chapel, many of the early noted itinerants preached in their rounds. Here Lee, Asbury, and other messengers of the church, proclaimed their message. Here Maffit delivered one of the first of his flourishing effusions on this side of the water. When the eccentric Lorenzo Dow was to preach, the bounds were too narrow, and the audience assembled in the open air, upon the hill, under the great elm.
The present Methodist church on the hill was erected in 1833.
The church was altered in 1879 (the current pediments above the pair of blue doors date to that alteration). The congregation moved out of the building in the twentieth century (c. 1960) and it was then unsympathetically remodeled as a furniture store and is now a photography studio.
Jesse Brown’s house in Norwich, at 77 East Town Street, facing Norwichtown Green, was licensed as a tavern and stage coach stop in 1790. President John Adams and First Lady Abigail Adams were guests at the Tavern on August 1, 1797. The Tavern was sold to William Williams of New London in 1814. Captain Bela Peck owned it from 1817 until his death in 1850. The next owner, Moses Pierce, bought the building in 1855. He gave it to the United Workers of Norwich to be used as a home for poor and orphaned children. It was called the Rock Nook Home, which is today part of United Community & Family Services.
The building which know houses the Rowayton Community Center in Norwalk was originally built in 1912 as the carriage house and stables for the Rock Ledge estate. The estate’s original mansion, built on the other side of Highland Street in 1911, burned down and was rebuilt in 1913. The carriage house and U-shaped stables wings are constructed with a rough stone first floor and a half-timbered upper story with jerkinhead roofs in the Tudor Revival style.
The Community Center also houses the Rowayton Library. After an brief early attempt to establish a library in Rowayton in 1867, locals established what would become today’s Rowayton Library in 1903. Originally located in the former Craw Store, Craw Hall, at 101 Rowayton Avenue, the library moved into the former home of the Rowayton Fire Department in 1926 and finally into the former stables in the 1960s.
Happy Thanksgiving!
When the historic Silvermine Tavern, located in the Silvermine section of Norwalk, closed in 2009, it was the end of an 80 year local institution. Several buildings make up the original Silvermine Tavern complex, including an old mill with origins in the seventeenth century, a coach house and a gatehouse that has since been attached to the main Tavern building. This structure has a plaque indicating that it was built c. 1810 as the Joseph Cocker Cotton Factory. Cocker’s business was an expensive undertaking and when he passed away unexpectedly in 1812 he left an estate that was heavily in debt. His widow Sally died the following year and Stephen Abbott acquired the property, but he too fell into debt and sold it in 1816 to his son. By that time the building had had new wings constructed for living quarters and a weaving shop. The factory continued on under various owners until, including David Comstock, who manufactured hats, until it was acquired in the 1850s by Henry Guthrie, an immigrant from England who owned a shipyard and three water-powered mills. Guthrie produced knobs for doors and furniture and local girls sanded, varnished and packed them for shipping in what would become the Tavern’s living room.
Otto Goldstein purchased the building in 1906. He also owned the nearby Red Mill, built c. 1800, which he used for his fur processing business. Goldstein lived in the former factory where he also had a taproom where he sold drinks to the local community of Silvermine, which was then becoming an artists’ colony. With the repeal of Prohibition, J. Kenneth Byard bought the property in 1929 and named it the Silvermine Tavern, offering dining and overnight accommodations. Ownership of the Tavern passed to I.M. Weiss in 1948. The Whitman family operated it from 1955 until the restaurant closed in 2009. It then continued for a few years as a bed & breakfast.
In 2013-2014 the property was acquired by developer Andrew Glazer, who is currently redeveloping the site. He renovated the store to become his new office and the mill house (called the Red Mill, it once had a water wheel) next to the Tavern to become his residence. He also built four new houses and a community barn on the Tavern’s old parking lot, the profits from them to support the next phase of the project, which is to extensively modernize and eventually reopen the Tavern itself. The interior is being gutted and the restaurant adapted from the sprawling space that seated 200 to a new space that will seat 60. The picture above was taken in 2014, before the current renovation work on the main Tavern building began earlier this year.
In 1873, the Saybrook Bank erected a new building on Main Street in Essex (its previous building, built in 1849, was taken over by the Essex Savings Bank). The Saybrook Bank was reorganized in 1907 as the Essex National Bank, which remodeled the front facade of the building in 1936-1937 to the appearance it has today. The bank later merged with other banks and today the building houses a branch of Liberty Bank.