Greenmanville Church (1851)

The Greenmanville Church at Mystic Seaport was built in 1851 during the area’s heyday as a shipbuilding center. As related in Seventh Day Baptists in Europe and America, Vol. II (1910):

In 1838 three brothers, George, Clarke and Thomas S. Greenman, members of the First Hopkinton church, settled in Mystic, Conn., and commenced the ship-building business. Thirteen years later, 1849, they built a mill for the manufacture of woolen goods. About these industries sprang up a village called Greenmanville. The most of those working in the ship-yard were Sabbath-keepers, and being several miles removed from any Seventh-day Baptist church, it was deemed wise to organize one. This was done in August, 1850, with about forty members. The constituent members were mostly from the First Hopkinton church, a few from the Waterford church, and one from the Newport church. The largest membership, fifty-six, was reached the first year and it held pretty well up to this for thirty years. Its present (1902) number is eighteen.

Though it never enrolled a large number of members, yet it exercised a wide influence in denominational and other circles. George Greenman, a member of this church, was president of the Seventh-day Baptist Missionary Society for thirty-one years. The leading men of the church took an active part in the anti-slavery struggle, and the temperance cause has been supported by these godly men. Clarke Greenman, Thomas S. Greenman and Benjamin F. Langworthy served the town in the state legislature at different times.

The congregation was depleted with the decline of the shipyard in the 1870s and 1880s and the selling of the woolen mill to owners of another denomination. The church closed in 1904 and the building then served as a private residence and an apartment building before it was acquired by Mystic Seaport in 1955. The Seaport moved the church from its original site (near the current Visitor Center) to its present location. For a time, the church was called the Aloha Meetinghouse and was a nondenominational church. Mystic Seaport added the current tower clock, built in 1857 by the Howard Clock Company of Massachusetts. The clock is on loan from Yale, where it was once located in the Old South Sheffield Hall of the Sheffield Scientific School. (more…)

Old Mystic United Methodist Church (1851)

During the first half of the nineteenth century, Methodism gained adherents in what is now the village of Old Mystic in Stonington. Circuit preachers came at regular intervals and services were held in private homes and various other sites until a church was erected in 1849. Built at the foot of Quoketaug Hill, it was destroyed by a fire on February 17, 1851. A new church, located at what is now 44 Main Street in Old Mystic, was completed by the end of the year. The church had an 80-foot spire that was lost in the Hurricane of 1938. A parish house was erected behind the church in 1912. This was enlarged and attached to the church in 1961. (more…)

Dr. J. K. Bucklyn, Jr. House (1890)

Dr. John K. Bucklyn, Jr. was the son of John Knight Bucklyn (1834-1906), a Civil War veteran who in 1899 earned the Medal of Honor for his action during the Battle of Chancellorsville on May 3, 1863. The senior Bucklyn was an educator who founded the Mystic Valley Institute in 1868. His two sons both attended the Institute and then the New York Medical College to became doctors. Dr. J. K. Bucklyn, Jr. built the house at 56-58 East Main Street in Mystic c. 1890. As described in Picturesque New London and Its Environs (1901):

The residence and offices of Dr. John Knight Bucklyn, Jr., one of its ablest physicians, are located on East Main Street, Mystic, and are connected by telephone. Dr. Bucklyn is a graduate of the New York Medical College, class of 1887, and of the Mystic Valley English and Classical Institute, J. K. Bucklyn, L.L.D., Principal. He has a large practice in Mystic, Stonington, Old Mystic, Noank, Poquonnock, and New London. He is a member of the Odd Fellows, and Medical Examiner for the Prudential Life Insurance Company, of Newark, New Jersey, and for the Knights of Pythias. His office hours are from 2 to 3, and 7 to 8 P. M. Dr. Bucklyn was born in Mystic July 31st, 1865, son of Professor John K. Bucklyn and Mary M. Young Bucklyn. On June 25th, 1891, he was united in marriage to Mary Emma Hall, of Mystic.

Dr. Bucklyn also owned a 35-foot full cabin power boat.

Old Mystic National Bank (1856)

The Old Mystic National Bank began as the Mystic Bank in 1833. It was established in a newly-built granite building in the village of Old Mystic in Stonington, which was a commercial center at the time. By 1856, business had grown to an extent that a larger building was required. It was erected of brick in the center of the village of Old Mystic. The iron bars across the windows were added after a attempted burglary in 1884. The institution became a national bank in 1865 and continued in business until undergoing a voluntary liquidation in 1887. By that time the village of Mystic to the south had become the local business hub instead of Old Mystic. After the bank closed, the 1856 building was sold to the town of Stonington in 1889. It was used as a District Hall for voting until the 1960s. During World War II, the Reliance Fire Company of Old Mystic used the attached back shed as a Civil Defense headquarters. It was later used to store fire equipment. In 1965, the building was sold to the Indian and Colonial Research Center. The ICRC is a non-profit organization that preserves the preserves the papers and collections of Eva L. Butler (1887-1969), a noted anthropologist, archeologist, historian, and naturalist.

Mystic Bank (1833)

Now located at Mystic Seaport, the Mystic Bank was originally built in 1833 in Old Mystic, at the head of the Mystic River. The first president of the bank was Elias Brown and the first cashier was George W. Noyes, who later held the same position at the Mystic River Bank. The Mystic Bank moved its operations to a new brick building in 1856. The first floor of the old bank building then became the post office and the upper floor was used as a carpenter’s shop. The building would be used for different purposes over the years until 1948-1951, when it was moved to Mystic Seaport. The current front portico is a reproduction of the original. (more…)