Edward Perkins (1743-1787) built a house at what is now 6 Grant Road in Bethany, which was sold by his son, Israel Perkins (1767-1846) in 1835 to Dr. Chauncey B. Foote of Hamden. Israel Perkins is described in The New England Historical and Genealogical Register, Volume 17 (1863):
Israel Perkins designed to pursue professional life and had expected to commence a course of study the year that his father died. Being left by this event at the head of the family, he was compelled to forego this purpose and remain at home on the farm. He lived in the house which his father built, on the turnpike from Litchfield, near the school-house. From 1793 to 1795, he lived at Hamden Plain. When he was 28 he became quite deaf, and continued so through life. He was well known in that part of the country, as selectman of the town, settler of estates, guardian of children, &c., &c.; and was so skilled in the law that he was familiarly called “the old lawyer.”
Dr. Foote removed the original Perkins House and built a new one just in front of where it had stood. The book Bethany’s Old Houses and Community Buildings (1972), by Alice Bice Bunton, however, refers to the current structure under the heading of “The Israel Perkins House.” In 1838, Dr. Foote sold the house to Major Lounsbury (died 1863) and it remained in the Lounsbury family until 1912.