As related in Sketches Of The People And Places Of New Hartford In The Past And Present (1883), by Henry R. Jones, the house at 598 Main Street in New Hartford was
erected about 1836, by Miss Lucy A. Jones for her parents, Mr and Mrs Sylvester Jones. The builder was Henry Lee of Pleasant Valley. The owner of this property afterwards became the wife of Edward A. Brooks, who in former years was a blacksmith in this village. Mr Brooks’ first wife was a daughter of Pitman Stow, who also was an old time blacksmith in the village. Mr Brooks, who, with his family, lived in this house for many years, died in 1875, leaving a daughter, Mary Jane, by his first wife, and a widow who also had one daughter, Julia, who married for her second husband Austin Lee, the son of the contractor who built the house. Mrs Brooks was an accomplished lady, for many years a teacher, having for a considerable period, with her sister Almira (Mrs J. C. Baker), successfully conducted a select school in Poughkeepsie, N. Y. Her brother, Herman Leroy Jones, is now living in this village. Her sister, Juliana (Mrs Thomas H. Gault), died in Strausburg, Pa., about thirty years ago. Mrs Brooks died Sept. 5, 1876, and her only child, Mrs Lee, in 1875. Her father died in 1854 and her mother a few years later. The property is now owned by Charles Dickinson of New Britain, a brother of Mrs Lee’s first husband.