John Wetmore House (1780)

In 1762, John Wetmore of Middlefield married his first cousin, Lois (a not uncommon practice among eighteenth-century farming families seeking to keep holdings within a larger family network). Circa 1780, the couple erected a house on land in Middlefield, owned by John’s father, Deacon Caleb Wetmore (1706-1788) who, unusually for the time, deeded the land to his niece and daughter-in-law Lois in 1786. The couple later deeded the property to their son, Captain John Wetmore, but during the 1790s, when Connecticut farmers were facing difficult times, he moved to Litchfield, where he died in 1847, and his brothers, Josiah, Azariah and James moved to Ohio. In eleven years the property had five different owners, but was them purchased by Jacob Miller and remained in his family until the early twentieth century. Located at 18 Maple Street, the Wetmore-Miller House has an early-twentieth century Colonial Revival entry portico.