The Plymouth Library is a small private library, operated by the Plymouth Library Association and located at 692 Main Street, not far from Plymouth Green. The library was founded in 1871, largely through the efforts of Rev. E. B. Hillard (1825-1895), pastor of the Plymouth Congregational Church from 1869 to 1889. The original library building was destroyed by fire in 1929. The current building, designed by architect Raymond Percival, was dedicated in April 1932.
The house at 39 Lester Avenue in Pawcatuck, Stonington was originally a church. It was built by the Westerly-Pawcatuck Seventh-Day Adventists, a congregation founded in Westerly, Rhode Island in 1912. By 1927 they had acquired the 0.05 acre property on Lester Avenue and built a small church. In the 1960s the dwindling congregation joined a larger church in New London. The Pawcatuck church remained vacant until 1978, when Charles and Deborah Hayden moved in and converted it into a residence. The old rope-and-pulley windows were replaced by the next owner, Andrea Carey, who moved in in 1983.
The Town of Chaplin is named for Deacon Benjamin Chaplin (1719-1795). He was a wealthy landowner who bequeathed the funds to establish an ecclesiastical society and construct a meeting house for his community, which would be incorporated as a town in 1822. Before his death, Chaplin sold a plot of land to his son-in-law, Ephraim Perkins (1745-1813), a veteran of the French and Indian War. Chaplin’s Congregational meeting house would be built on a half-acre of this parcel in 1815. Perkins, who had moved to Becket, Massachusetts, upon his marriage to Mary Chaplin in 1771, later gave the rest of his land in Chaplin to his son, Ephraim Perkins, Jr. (1773-1851). On that land the younger Ephraim built the house that stands at 28 Chaplin Street. According to Part III of The Family of John Perkins of Ipswich, Massachusetts (1889), by George A. Perkins, Ephraim Perkins married Lucy Merrick on January 1, 1800 and “They resided five years in Mansfield, Conn. [Chaplin was then part of Mandfield], removing in 1805, to Trenton, Oneida Co., New York.” In 1840 they moved to Wisconcin. The Perkins House in Chaplin, the oldest on Chaplin Street, has changed hands many times over the years. The property also has an historic horse barn.
At the corner of Nott Street and Wolcott Hill Road in Wethersfield is a house (248 Nott Street) built in 1800 by Deacon Simeon Francis (1770-1823). Five Children of Simeon Francis would eventually move west, making an epic journey. As described in Indiana and Indianans, Vol. III (1919) by Jacob Piatt Dunn:
Five of the Francis brothers and their two sisters, children of Simeon and Mary Ann, decided after the death of their parents to leave their old home in Wethersfield and seek a new home in the west. Charles and Simeon left home sometime previously. The others embarked on the sloop Falcon at Hartford September 17, 1829, their journey being down the Connecticut River and through Long Island Sound to New York, thence up the Hudson River to Albany and across the state by the Erie Canal to Buffalo, where they were joined by their brother Simeon. A sailing vessel took them over Lake Erie to Sandusky, and thence they procured wagons to cross the State of Ohio to Cincinnati. After a journey fraught with much exposure and lack of proper nourishment they reached Cincinnati, and were thence borne by a small steamboat down the Ohio and up the Mississippi to St. Louis, barely escaping with their lives through the wrecking of one of the boats. They were seventy-seven days in making the journey which can now be made with comfort in less than one-third as many hours.
In 1831 Simeon, Josiah and John went to Springfield, Illinois, taking with them a little old printing press which they brought from Connecticut. On November 10, 1831, the first issue of the Sangamon Journal, now the Illinois State Journal, was brought out by these brothers. Simeon and Allen Francis fostered the youthful ambitions of Abraham Lincoln by loaning him a copy of Blackstone and all the other books possible. They also introduced Mr. Lincoln to the leading social and professional figures of Springfield. It was at the home of Allen Francis that Mr. Lincoln met Miss Todd, whom he subsequently married. Mr. Lincoln reciprocated in 1861 by appointing Simeon Francis paymaster of all the troops in the Northwest, with the rank of colonel, and stationed at Vancouver, Washington. In 1870 he was retired on half pay and returned to Portland, where he established the Portland Oregonian, still a power in the newspaper field.
Mentioned in the above is Allen Francis (1815-1887), who was born in the Wethersfield house. As described in Francis; Descendants of Robert Francis of Wethersfield, Conn. (1906), compiled by Charles E. Francis:
He went to St. Louis when a young man and resided there until 1834. He then moved to Springfield, Ill., and in 1846 he became connected with his brothers. Charles and Simeon, in publishing the Sangamon County Journal, at which time they erected the new Journal buildings. He was for many years a member of the city council of Springfield. In 1861 President Lincoln appointed him the first consul to Victoria, Vancouver’s Island. He resigned in 1884. With his sons he was afterwards engaged in the fur trade with the Indians on the Pacific coast. [. . .]
It was through Hon. Allen Francis that Secretary Seward gained the information concerning the varied resources of Alaska which determined him to enter into negotiations with Russia for its purchase. He was a firm and intimate friend of President Lincoln, and it was at his home in Springfield that
Mr. Lincoln met Miss Todd, whom he subsequently married.
Named for Clark Tomlinson, the house at 447 Quaker Farms Road in Oxford was built about 1820. By 1835 it was owned by Asa and Hannah Hawkins and in 1868 was owned by Horace E. Hinman (1819-1902). As related in a biography of his son in the Commemorative Biographical Record of Dutchess County, New York (1897), Horace Hinman
was born in Southbury, Conn., and married a native of that place, Mary Hughes, a lady of Scotch descent. They first settled in Southbury and later in Oxford, Conn., Mr. Hinman following the shoemaker’s trade. He is a Democrat in politics, and he and his wife are both consistent members of the M. E. Church. They had four children[.]
The house was later occupied by tenant farmers, became dilapidated, and was restored in 1971.
Morse and Norton’s Block is an Italianate-style commercial and apartment building built in 1880 at 72-80 East Main Street in Meriden. One of the two original owners of the building was Samuel L Norton (1821-1902). In more recent times, tenants had to abandon the building in early 2014 after the back wall of the eastern half partially collapsed. Work to repair the structure was greatly facilitated the following year when the building, still divided between two owners, became the property of a single owner.
The house at 100 Main Street South in Woodbury was built between 1765 and 1776 by a member of the Minor family. The sign on the house displays the name David Minor, with a date of about 1770. David’s son, Simeon Minor, inherited the land, house and barn in 1776. The house passed from the Minor family to Jabez Bacon in 1784 and to Samuel Robbins in 1818. Later owners would make extensive alterations to the house.
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