Nathan Seelye House (1775)

The house at 2 Chestnut Street in Bethel was built c. 1775. At some point it was acquired by Nathan Seelye (or Seeley), probably a few years after his marriage to Hannah Hawley in 1790. Born in Fairfield in 1766, Nathan Seelye was a farmer and a hatter whose business in Bethel was located at the corner of Wooster and Main Streets. Earlier, he had been a farmer in the Startfield section of Fairfield. A story about him is related in A History of the Old Town of Stratford and the City of Bridgeport, Connecticut (1886), by Samuel Orcutt:

Nathan Seeley, when a young man, was a constable in Stratfield parish and had a writ to serve for a debt; and the law was at that time, such that the person on whom a writ was served must be touched with the paper to make the arrest legal. He rode a large, powerful horse, and found his man loading his cart with manure with a pitchfork. He told the constable to keep away and kept the fork raised for his defence. Upon this said Nathan put spurs to his horse and made him jump on the man so that he touched him with the writ. After having done that he had the power to call out the militia to make the arrest complete.

The house in Bethel continued to be occupied by his son, Isaac H. Seelye, who also had a hatting business. Isaac’s brother Seth was a merchant whose house is now the Bethel Public Library. Two of his sons became college presidents: Laurenus C. Seelye was president of Smith College from 1873 to 1910 and Julius Hawley Seelye was president of Amherst College from 1876 to 1890.