Cornwell-Daniels House (1780)

Elisha Cornwell (1721-1781) one of the original settlers of East Hampton, erected the house at 64 South Main Street (facing Daniels Street) in 1780 on land he had purchased the year before. He quickly sold the house to his daughter and died the following year. Amasa Daniels, Jr. purchased the property in 1803. His granddaughter, Caroline Brown Buell (1842-1927) grew up in the house. Her father, Rev. Thomas Gibson Brown, an itinerant Methodist and chaplain during the Civil War, had married Amasa’s daughter, Caroline. Caroline B. Brown, whose husband, Lt. Frederick W. H. Buell, died of malaria in the Civil War, would become a leader of the temperance movement, writing and lecturing extensively and serving as corresponding secretary of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. She retired to East Hampton where she died in 1927.