Orlando Bolles House (1847)

The house at 22 Hurlbutt Road in Gales Ferry was built by Orlando Bolles (1807-1895), a whaling captain. He had purchased the land on which the house stands in 1844, before setting out on a two-year journey on the whaling schooner Exile. After his return he built the house in 1847, but sold it just three years later to William Fitch of Montville, a relative of his wife, Ellen Fitch. In 1856, the house was acquired by Bolles’ daughter, Harriet, and her husband, Charles L. Crandall. After her husband’s death in 1875, Harriet and her sister, Annie Bolles Pierce, spent their summers at the house in Gales Ferry and their winters in New York. After Harriet’s death in 1926 the house passed to her sister, who died in 1941. She willed the house to the New England Southern Conference of the Methodist Church, which then sold it to Courtland Colver, Sunday School Superintendent.