James Lyman Kellam House (1850)

The house at 171 Ferry Lane in South Glastonbury was built circa 1850 by James Lyman Kellam (1824-1897), a farmer, on land his father, James Kellam (1789-1878), had acquired in 1816. It is a Greek Revival-style house with a later nineteenth-century front porch. In 1893, James Lyman Kellam took over the job of keeping the system of kerosene lamps along the shore of the Connecticut River that guided ships to the correct channel at a challenging location where the river bends. After his death, two of his sons who lived in the house took over the job: Arthur Lyman Kellam (1873-1936), who was the official light keeper, and Walter Bulkeley Kellam (1863-1958), who became assistant keeper in 1905. For decades, Walter Kellam, who was blind, would make his way down a narrow catwalk every night to light the oil lamps. On May 31, 1931, the Hartford Courant had a profile of Walter Kellam (“Blind, He Lights the Way for Others: For Past 25 Years, Walter Kellam Has Tended River Beacons At South Glastonbury”), in which he describes lighting the lamps during a blizzard in 1926 and during the flood of 1927. Near the house is a historic barn which today is part of Horton Farm. The farm also has a number of historic tobacco sheds.