Gideon Hale House (1762)

The house at 1401 Main Street in Glastonbury was built for Gideon Hale, probably in 1762, the year he married Mary White of Middletown. According to tradition, the wedding party crossed the Connecticut River after the wedding to the newly-built house and ended up staying for a week because of a severe snowstorm. Gideon Hale (1736-1812) was a member of the Connecticut General Assembly (1782-1785) and Constable of Glastonbury (1873). From December 1814 until the spring of 1817, the Columbia Lodge of Masons met at the house. As described in The Hollister Family of America; Lieut. John Hollister, of Wethersfield, Conn., and His Descendants (1886), edited by Lafayette Wallace Case:

The death of Mrs. Hezekiah Hale, at the age of 94, leaves the old Hale mansion in Glastonbury without a mistress at its head for the first time since its erection, one hundred and twenty-three years ago.

It was in this house, then just built, that Gideon Hale and Mary White, who were married December 23 [1762], commenced housekeeping, and here their youngest son, Hezekiah, brought his newly married wife, Pamela, daughter of Dr. Asaph Coleman, November 17, 1813. The elder Mrs. Hale died, a widow, April 1, 1820, and Mrs. Pamela Hale died Oct. 8, 1885, having survived her husband fifty three years. For one hundred and twenty-three years, lacking a little over two months, the house has seen but these two mistresses. Gideon Hale and Mary White reared a family of five sons and six daughters, under the old roof-tree, all of whom, except two daughters, were married and left the old place; and Hezekiah Hale and Pamela Coleman reared a family of three sons and three daughters, who, with one exception, went into the world and had families of their own; and the descendants of both, now widely scattered, will greatly miss the cheery greeting and hospitable welcome of the last mistress, who always made a visit to the old home so pleasant, and whose fund of anecdote and information regarding those who had gone, always so willingly given, was full of information and interest. The funeral of Mrs. Hale took place on Sunday afternoon, and was largely attended by sorrowing relatives and neighbors. The Rev. Mr. Betts, of the Episcopal church, officiated. The solemn dignity of that beautiful service in the rural cemetery, under the bright sun and genial October air, made the scene very impressive.

Mrs. Pamela Hale, the estimable lady here alluded to, was an aunt of the late Hon. Gideon Welles, of this city. Mr. Welles held in high esteem the venerable lady, and he was fond of the old homesteads in Glastonbury, where his father lived and where he was born. He used to relate many pleasant reminiscences of those fine homesteads, and the prominent families who occupied them.

The house’s front Connecticut River Valley doorway is a reproduction based on nineteenth-century sketches of the original.