Built in 1847 (some sources indicate 1861), the Ira H. Palmer House, at the corner of High and Main Streets in Stonington Borough, is transitional in style between the Greek Revival and Italianate. It was built by John F. Trumbull, who owned a factory in town, for his daughter, Harriet, who married Ira Hart Palmer.
The Oliver Smith House, on Main Street in Stonington Borough, perhaps the oldest surviving house in town, was built in the early 1760s (after 1761). Smith, a merchant and one of the defenders of Stonington during the American Revolution, was the last owner of Venture Smith. Born under the name Broteer Furro, Venture was an African prince enslaved at the age of six and brought to America. Eventually buying his freedom when in his 30s from Oliver Smith, Venture went on to purchase land and became prosperous by farming, fishing and shipping goods. In the 1790s, Venture Smith dictated his life story to a schoolteacher named Elisha Niles. This autobiography was then published as A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Venture, a Native of Africa but Resident above Sixty Years in the United States of America, Related by Himself (1798).
The Stonington Borough house of of Dr. Silas Holmes was built in 1787. Holmes was a physician and, according to Richard Anson Wheeler’s History of the Town of Stonington (1900), “He was summoned to visit a sick man on Block Island, who sent for him in his boat, which took and bore him safely over to the island, and after he had visited his patient and diagnosed his physical condition, he started with the boatman and craft to return to his home in Stonington, but unfortunately a terrible thunder storm arose with a rushing cyclone of wind, which lashed the ocean into fearful waving foam, which capsized their boat and filled it with water, which, in spite of all the efforts of the doctor and the boatman, sunk, and they were both drowned.” Wheeler gives the date of this event as September 12, 1790, but a sign on the house states that “Dr. Holmes drowned returning from an errand of mercy on Block Island in 1791.”
Gurdon Trumbull, a Stonington merchant, was of the volunteers who defended the town during the British bombardment of 1814. He was also involved in developing the sealing and whaling industries in town and became a prominent citizen. His Greek Revival house on Main Street was built after the fire of 1837. Trumbull eventually moved to Hartford in 1852. He had several notable children, including the author Annie Trumbull Slosson, author of such books as Seven Dreamers (1890), Aunt Abby’s Neighbors (1902), Story-tell Lib (1911) and A Local Colorist (1912). His son, J. Hammond Trumbull, was a Connecticut Secretary of State and a scholar, who wrote The True-blue Laws Of Connecticut And New Haven And The False Blue-laws Invented By The Rev. Samuel Peters (1876). Another son, Henry Clay Trumbull, was a Congregational minister, chaplain of the Tenth Connecticut Regiment in the Civil War and author of such works as The Captured Scout of the Army of the James (1869), The Blood Covenant (1885), Studies in Oriental Social Life and Gleams from the East on the Sacred Page (1894) and The Salt Covenant (1899).
Also today, check out the latest entries at Historic Buildings of Massachusetts, the Francis Parkman House in Boston and the Ashley House in Deerfield.
The Elkanah Cobb House, on Water Street in Stonington Borough, is one of the oldest in town. Built in 1760s, the Cobb House is a one-and-a-half story structure with a gambrel roof and unusual 9 over 6 sash windows. Cobb was the owner of the house at the time when Stonington was bombarded by British ships on August 19, 1814 during the War of 1812. According to The Homes of our Ancestors in Stonington, Conn., by Grace Denison Wheeler (1903), the house “stood in the thick of the fight near the [American] battery, and so has many scars received during the bombardment.” Benson J. Lossing visited Stonington in 1860 and mentions the house in his Pictorial Field-Book of the War of 1812 (1869).
The Capt. Amos Palmer House is located on Main Street in Stonington Borough. The house was built by Amos Palmer in 1787, replacing his earlier home on the same site, which had burned down when a barn on an adjoining property caught on fire. When a British cannonball hit the house during the War of 1812, Capt. Palmer waited until it had cooled and brought it to the fort to be returned to its sender! From 1837 to 1840, the house was occupied by Anna Matilda McNeill Whistler, whose sister was married to Dr. George E. Palmer of Stonington, and her family. Her husband, the engineer Major George Washington Whistler, was working on the Providence to Stonington railroad. Their son, the artist James McNeill Whistler, was a child at the time. He later painted the famous portrait of his mother in 1871. The family frequently revisited the house. In the twentieth century, it was the home of the poet, Stephen Vincent Benét, and later the Canadian artist, author and filmmaker, James Houston.
The front section of the building known as Dr. Lord’s Hall was possibly built as early as 1765 by Thomas Griffing, on Main Street in Stonington Borough. In 1811, the lot is described as having a shop and a house. In 1814, Dr. William Lord became the building’s owner through a defaulted mortgage. He enlarged it and gutted the second floor, installing a sprung floor so that dance classes could be held, even though, at the time, a revival movement was underway and the Baptist church nearby disapproved of dancing. Later, the first Stonington Band practiced in the house and the band’s practice room was used for Episcopal services from 1844 to 1849, while a church was being built. In later years, the house was a tenement and a grocery store, but is now a private home. Dr. Lord’s own residence, no longer standing, was nearby on Main Street.
