The brick house at 954 Main Street in South Windsor was built in 1805. There have been additions since that time. The house was built for Arnold Allen (1759-1846) of Massachusetts, a Revolutionary War veteran, the year of his marriage to Mary Elmer, who was born in South Windsor in 1775.
Built circa 1873, the John Newberry King House is a French Second Empire-style residence located at 793 Main Street in South Windsor. It was built for John Newberry King (1822-1895). According to the second volume of the Commemorative Biographical Record of Hartford County (1901):
Hon. John Newberry King, son of Roderick King, and the father of Isaac White King, was born March 24. 1822. He married, Dec. 25, 1848, Julia Ann, daughter of Isaac and Adocia (White) Keeney, and a direct descendant of Perigrene White, who, it is said, was the first white child born after the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers. Mr. King was one of the first to introduce tobacco growing in the town of South Windsor; was among the first to build tobacco sheds, and to engage extensively in the cultivation of that plant. He was one of the substantial men of his period, a man of good ability, excellent judgment and an all-round good and useful citizen. He was a farmer all through his active, busy life, which was lived in a manner worthy of his New England ancestry, and which is to the credit of his posterity. For many years he was active and prominent in the councils of the Democratic party of his section. He served that party on its central committee and in 1879 represented his town in the General Assembly of the State. He was prominently identified with the Masonic Fraternity, and was the principal mover in organizing Evergreen Lodge, No. 114, F. & A. M., of which he was a charter member, and for a number of years its worshipful master. He was successful in the management of his business interests, and accumulated a competence, holding considerable property mostly in his town, also in East Hartford. Mr. King died in 1895, aged seventy-three years.
At 960 Main Street in South Windsor is a gambrel-roofed house built in 1785. It was the home of John Newberry, who may be the John Newberry who was born in 1756 and died in 1825.
South Windsor’s Union District School was the most modern school building in Connecticut at the time of its construction in 1905. The new school brought together students from three others that once operated along Main Street. Located at 771 Main Street, the former school building, long believed to be haunted, was purchased from the town by the South Windsor Historical Society for $1 in 2002. The Society is currently renovating the long vacant building, which will become a museum of local history and a cultural arts center.
The Library Journal, Vol. 31, No. 10 (October 1906), reported that:
The library recently built at a cost of $4000 by Mr. H. W. Sadd, of Wapping, Ct., as a memorial to the Sadd family, one of the first to settle in “Wapping parish,” a part of the town of South Windsor, was dedicated on Sept. 19. […] The library is built of blocks of cement, made in the cellar from sand dug from a hillside near by, is well lighted and spacious, heated by a furnace and well equipped for the needs of the neighborhood for years to come. The town of South Windsor voted in 1898 to establish and maintain a public library, which was kept in the basement of the Baptist church until lately, when it was moved to a room in the large new school-house. The Wapping Library is a very flourishing and successful branch, receiving books from the main library, which are changed every few months. A Chautauqua circle, which has existed for a long time, has been a most valuable and stimulating influence in creating a desire for a library.
In the 1960s, the Wapping Library collection was moved from the Sadd Memorial Library building to a shopping center storefront and consolidated with books from the Wood Memorial Library. These were moved in 1979 to the current South Windsor Public Library. The old Wapping library building now houses offices.
The Church in Wapping, a section of South Windsor, was built in 1801 and initially served several denominations. The Baptists and Methodists later founded their own churches, so that by 1817, only the Congregationalists remained. They eventually organized as the Second Congregational Church in South Windsor in 1830. The Congregationalists later merged with the Methodists to found the Wapping Federated Church, which became the Wapping Community Church in 1936. The original appearance of the church is not known. It was altered to its current Greek Revival style in 1849.
Abner Reed was a printmaker, engraver, publisher and author and Deacon of the Congregational Church in East Windsor Hill (now in South Windsor). John Warner Barber, a well-known artist and author, studied with Reed at his engraving shop in East Windsor before moving to New Haven. Abner Reed’s house, built in 1750, is on Main Street in South Windsor.
You must be logged in to post a comment.