Daniel Tyler House (1810)

The city property listing for the house at 130 Washington Street in Norwich gives a construction date of 1810, which seems too early for this Italianate building. The National Register of Historic Places nomination for the Chelsea Parade Historic District gives a date of c. 1880, which is too late because it is known that Edith Kermit Carow, future wife of Theodore Roosevelt, was born here on August 6, 1861. The house has clearly been much altered over the years. Could Italianate features have been added to a much earlier house? It was the residence of Daniel Putnam Tyler (1799-1882), Edith‘s grandfather (Tyler’s daughter Gertrude had married Charles Carow of New York City). Daniel Tyler was a West Point graduate who became an iron manufacturer and railroad president. He served as a general in the Civil War, commanding a division in the Union Army at the First Battle of Bull Run. Although he took a substantial portion of the blame for the Union disaster at that battle, he was promoted and commanded a brigade at the Siege of Corinth, Mississippi. At the Battle of Harpers Ferry, September 15, 1862, Tyler’s division surrendered to Stonewall Jackson and spent two months as prisoners of war at Camp Douglas before being officially paroled. Tyler left the army in 1864, the same year his wife passed away. He owned his house in Norwich until 1868. By the start of the twenty-first century the building had become dilapidated and was condemned, but c. 2004 it was restored and subdivided into apartments.