William Boardman West Boarding House (1848)

By the 1840s, the village of Rockfall in Middlefield was an active industrial area with a number of mills. Between 1845 and 1848, William F. Boardman built two boarding houses for workers on Main Street in Rockfall. The one pictured above is the west boarding house at 127 Main Street; next door is the east boarding house. Otis Smith, who owned the nearby Smith pistol factory, bought the west boarding house in 1873. In the twentieth century, many Polish immigrants settled in the area, including the Drega family. Juzef W. and Weronica Drega acquired the house in 1923. Today it is a two-family house.

Yalesville United Methodist Church (1899)

In 1866, members of several Protestant denominations in the Yalesville section of Wallingford erected a small frame church known as the Union Church. Methodists and Baptists predominated in this mixed congregation. The following year the Methodists decided to become independent and purchased the Baptists’ share in the church for $3,428.61, with the aid of a donation from Charles Parker, a wealthy factory owner. A new First Methodist Church, now the Yalesville United Methodist Church, was erected at 8 New Place Street in 1899. A Church School addition was built in 1957.

Capt. John Anthony Wolfe House (1809)

At 3 Gravel Street in Mystic is a house, built between 1809 and 1815, that was traditionally called the “Case Bottle House” because it resembled the shape of the cases in which bottles of liquor were once shipped. It is not the only house in the area to have had that title: the same name was applied to the Elijah Williams House in the village of Wolf Neck in Stonington (noted in The Homes of Our Ancestors in Stonington, Conn. (1903), by Grace Denison Wheeler). The house on Gravel Street was built by Capt. John Anthony Wolfe and has been much altered and enlarged over the years. Restored in 1951, it is now a commercial property, home to Grover Insurance.

Jonathan Bidwell House (1768)

Long thought to date to the seventeenth century (a plaque on the house once displayed the year 1666), the house at 475 Tolland Street in East Hartford is now thought to be the house referred to by Joseph O. Goodwin in East Hartford: Its History and Traditions (1879): “The house next east of this, owned by Oliver W. Elmer, was the homestead of Jonathan Bidwell. He died in 1815.” It was likely built around the time of Bidwell’s marriage to Anne Benton in December 28, 1768. It was then owned by Bidwell’s son, also named Jonathan, who died in 1858. Oliver W. Elmer bought the house in 1864 from Bidwell’s daughter, Ruhamah Bidwell Elmer. The house once had a “coffin door” on the west side that was removed around 1987.

H. Wooster Webber House (1896)

Henry Wooster Webber (1866-1911) was a superintendent at Comstock, Cheney & Company in Ivotyton, a position his father, Lorenzo Dow Webber (1833-1905), had held for thirty years. H. Wooster Webber later also served on the board of directors of the company. He married Bessie Wright in 1893. Her father, Alfred Mortimer Wright, led the Connecticut Valley Manufacturing Company in Centerbrook. Webber’s house at 81 Main Street in Ivoryton was built in 1896, next to his father’s house. He later moved his family to Hartford because of the high reputation of the city’s public schools. Then he would reside during the week in Ivoryton and spend his weekends with his family in Hartford. The family also had a summer home in Westbrook. Webber died in 1911 and after his widow’s death in 1920, the house in Ivoryton was inhereted by their son L. D. Webber, who lost the house eighteen years later when he went bankrupt.

C. L. Adams Company (1878)

The store at 47 Main Street South in Woodbury was built in 1878. Starting out as a feed and lumber store run by Nathan Burton, the business changed ownership many times. In 1905 it took the name C. L. Adams Company for Carl L. Adams, one of the store’s owners. Adams sold his part of the business in 1920, but was then paid $60 annually for the continued use of his name. The store has continued as an animal feed and hardware store, operated since 1941 by the Newell family.