Capt. Joseph W. Holmes House (1851)

The brick house at 35 Church Street in Mystic was built in 1851. A sign on the house indicates it was the home of Capt. Joseph W. Holmes of the Corolanus. Joseph Warren Holmes (1824-1912) was noted for being the captain to have made the most voyages around Cape Horn (84). He also sailed around the Cape of Good Hope fourteen times. In 1865 he bought a larger house at the corner of High Street and Old New London Road in Mystic. According to the Biographical Review, Vol. XXVI: Containing Life Sketches of Leading Citizens of New London County, Connecticut (1898):

It is doubtful if Captain Holmes’s record as a mariner is paralleled by that of any other. For nearly or quite sixty years he has followed the sea. No vessel under his command has ever been lost or shipwrecked, and not a man of all his crews was ever lost.

The same book elaborates his career: at the age of seventeen, having made several early voyages,

in the spring shipped on the bark “Leander,” under Captain Bailey, with whom he made his first voyage around the world, completing the circuit in twenty-two months. The “Leander” was engaged in whale fishery in the South Atlantic, South Pacific, and Indian Oceans. At twenty-one he became master of the same bark, on which he made three voyages, the second and third of twenty months each. Leaving the ” Leander” in 1847, he went in the “Coriolanus” on a whaling trip to the Indian Ocean, followed by a voyage to the Arctic Ocean, where the ship was filled in sixty days. He continued to engage in the whale fishery until 1854. After leaving the “Coriolanus,” Captain Holmes was successively commander of the “Fanning,” “Frances,” “Haze,” “Twilight,” and “‘Seminole”; and for the past ten years or more he has had charge of the “Charmer,” a full-rigged merchantman, which sails from New York to San Francisco and foreign ports.

The house at 35 Church Street is nearly identical to the neighboring house, built in 1846 at 33 Church Street, but without the covered front portico and enclosed side porch that were later added to the earlier structure.

Trinity Lutheran Church, Centerbrook (1977)

The Swedish Evangelical Lutheran Trinity Church, in the village of Centerbrook in Essex, was founded in 1898. The congregation erected their original church building, next to the Falls River millpond on Main Street, in 1907-1908. Services continued to be held in Swedish until the late 1940s. The church was destroyed by fire in the early hours of March 21, 1975. A new Trinity Lutheran Church was soon rebuilt on the same site, 109 Main Street. After the fire, the congregation had investigated the old building’s cornerstone to see if something had been sealed inside by the Swedish immigrant founders of the church. Nothing was found there, but then the great-grandson of the man who had laid the original foundation shared the story, handed down to him, that there had been indeed been a box of artifacts placed in the foundation. A new search in the wall behind the cornerstone revealed a copper box, containing a historical account of the church’s founding in Swedish, coins, a 1907 Swedish almanac and other documents. The box was resealed with other items added by the congregation in a new container and placed in the new church’s cornerstone (see Emily Sigler, “Artifacts Going Back Into Church Walls,” Hartford Courant, May 25, 1976). In 2005, the church completed a renovation and expansion project that almost completely rebuilt the structure and added 1,600 square feet on its east side. A new altar was built as an extension with windows providing views of the neighboring pond and river.

John Ingraham House (1734)

The main block of the house at 91 North Cove Road in Old Saybrook is thought to have been built in 1734 by John Ingraham (1679-1750). The house has later additions at its western end. The house passed through a number of different owners until it was purchased by Paul R. and Anna Opp of Irvington, New York in 1928. They built a sea wall and boat house. They used the home on weekends until 1937, then as a summer home until they made it their year-round residence in 1942. Mrs. Opp resided in the house alone after the death of her husband in 1944 She sold it in 1950.

Jonathan Pasco House (1794)

Built in 1784, the house at 31 South Main Street in East Windsor was later converted to use as a restaurant. For 26 years it was Jonathan Pasco’s Restaurant, named for the man who built the house. A captain in the Revolutionary War, Jonathan Pasco (1760-1844) was at the Battle of Trenton and at one point was held captive by Native Americans. By 1869 the house was owned by E. F. Thompson. Jonathan Pasco’s Restaurant closed in 2015. The house is now the location of Roberto’s Real American Tavern.

Eli Haskell House (1812)

At one end of old Main Street in the East Windsor Hill section of South Windsor are a pair of brick Federal-style houses with identical facades. The first, located at 1909 Main Street, was built by Eli Bissell Hakell, a merchant, in 1812. The second (featured in a post from the earliest days of this website) was built a year later by his father-in-law, Aaron Bissell. Eli Haskell (1778-1861) married two Bissell sisters: first Sophia (1785-1816) in 1810 and then Susan (1790-1871) in 1818. Eli and Susan Haskell later moved to Ogdensburg, St. Lawrence County, New York. Eli’s son, Frederick Haskell (1810-1890), was one of the founders of the Haskell and Barker Car Company.