Built in 1878 on Broad Street Green in Wethersfield for James R. Anderson, who founded Anderson Farms. It was later passed to his son and grandson. Gothic Revival Houses of this type are referred to as “Carpenter Gothic.” The Anderson Farm Stand can be found in front of the house in season.
Built in 1861, on Main Street in Wethersfield, for Edward Robbins, who owned the Johnson & Robbins seed company. Charles C. Hart was connected to this company for fourteen years before he began his own business in the 1892. As the Chas. C. Hart Seed Co. grew, it eventually moved into the old offices and warehouses of the Johnson & Hart Company, and remains in the same location today, currently in a 1955 brick complex just south of the Robbins House.
As a plaque in front of the house indicates, it stands at the former site of Nathaniel Stillman’s Tavern. When Washington had his famous conference with the Comte de Rochambeau, just down the street in the Webb House, in May of 1781, the Stillman Tavern housed the French staff.
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Rev. James Lockwood, Wethersfield’s Congregational minister from 1738-1772, had turned down the presidencies of Yale and Princeton to stay in town. In gratitude, members of the congregation of First Church donated the money, materials and labor to build this center-chimney, gambrel-roofed house on Main Street in 1767. It was therefore not a parsonage, but instead a personal gift to the pastor. It currently serves as a rectory for neighboring Trinity Episcopal Church.
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Built in 1788-1789 on Main Street in Wethersfield, adjacent to the Joseph Webb House, for the leather worker Isaac Stevens. Joseph Webb, Jr was greatly in debt after the Revolutionary war and sold the land to Stevens, whose house follows a similar Georgian design to that of the Webb House, but on a smaller scale and without a gambrel roof. Title to the house was conveyed to the Colonial Dames in 1945 by its last resident, Jennie Andrews, to prevent its being torn down (note the proximity of the commercial building to the right of the house). After Mrs. Andrews’s death in 1958, the Dames restored the house, opening it to the public in 1963. The Isaac Stevens House, together with the Joseph Webb House and Silas Deane House, today comprise the Webb-Deane-Stevens Museum.
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Built in 1804 on Main Street in Wethersfield for Captain John Hurlbut, who had served on the Neptune, the first ship from Connecticut to sail around the world. In the 1850s, a later owner added Italianate features to this brick Federal style house. These additions include the projecting cornice with brackets, the entry portico, side veranda, and belvedere tower. Jane Robbins Dunham left the property to the Wethersfield Historical Society and it is now a historic house museum.
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Built next door to the Webb House, on Wethersfield’s Main Street, in the late 1760s for Silas Deane, a Yale educated lawyer from Goton who settled in town in 1762. Deane married Mehitable Nott Webb, the widow of the merchant Joseph Webb, in 1763 and their son, Jesse Deane, was born in 1764. Because Mehitable died in 1767, it is probable she never lived in the Deane House. After her death, Deane married a second wealthy widow, Elizabeth Saltonstall Evards, in 1769. Deane became involved in the American Revolution, serving as a delegate to the Continental Congress. In 1776, he was sent to France on a mission to secure French aid. Later joined by Benjamin Franklin and Arthur Lee, Deane worked well with the former in negotiating an alliance with the French, but clashed with the latter. Lee’s charges that his colleague had mismanaged funds eventually led to Deane’s recall.
After a dispute with Congress, Deane returned to Europe in 1781, where he lived in poverty for many years. He later died in mysterious circumstances in 1789 before he could complete his return journey to America. By then his reputation had been severely damaged by Lee’s accusations and by the publication of private letters in which Deane had questioned the Revolution and considered rapprochment with Britain. He had never been found guilty of Lee’s charges and in 1842 was exhonorated by Congress.
His house was acquired by the Colonial Dames in 1959. After undergoing a historic restoration, it opened to the public in 1974, as part of the Webb-Deane-Stevens Museum. The museum has created a website, Silas Deane Online, which features images, a timeline, exerpts from primary sources relating to Deane, and a virtual tour of the house. He was also discussed last year in the Hartford Courant.
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Captain James Francis, a master builder, constructed this house for himself on Hartford Avenue in Wethersfield in 1793. In 1815, he expanded the original 1 1/2-story building with a gambrel roof to two stories with a gable roof. Capt. Francis also built a number of other brick houses in Wethersfield during this period. The front and side porches were added by his granddaughter, Jane Francis, in the nineteenth century. The house is currently owned by the Wethersfield Historical Society.
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