In 1885, William Ellsworth Hall, a pioneering orchard-owner in Wallingford, together with thirty-one others, established Wallingford Grange No. 33. Hall was called “The Father of the Wallingford Grange” in a letter of sympathy from the Grange to his family after his death in 1920. Wallingford’s Grange Hall was built at 586 Center Street in 1933 and is still used for Grange meetings twice a month.
Born in Groton, Enoch Burrows (1770-1852) was a merchant who was part-owner of a shipyard on the east bank of the Mystic River. He served as a selectman in Stonington and in the Connecticut General Assembly. In 1791, Enoch Burrows married Esther Denison at the Denison Homestead called Pequotsepos. The couple moved into a new house, located at 24 Main Street in Old Mystic. As related by Grace Denison Wheeler in The Homes of Our Ancestors in Stonington, Conn. (1903):
The long flight of marble steps which leads up to the front door came from Mr. Burrows marble quarry, located in western Massachusetts near Pittsfield. From the same quarry was brought the marble to build the new City Hall in Philadelphia, which occupies four blocks. The house also contains a marble sink and a large stirring dish, all from the same quarry, which was brought down the Connecticut river in some kind of a water craft, and landed at the dock before the door. Mr. Burrows was a large landholder, owning many beautiful farms and Mystic Island, originally called Ram’s Island. He married Esther Denison, daughter of Grandmother Jane; she was a very energetic woman, a housekeeper and homemaker of New England’s best type, large-hearted, generous, sociable and entertaining, an excellent cook, and gave much attention to all appetizing things which please the eye and appeal to the palate. She had a good force of domestics to execute her commands, and when her table was seen covered with china, glass and silver, and loaded with choice viands, one needed no second invitation to partake of her hospitality. Her husband was a man of commanding figure, six feet two inches in his stockings; genial, kind-hearted and capable, and in his later years, in his home in West Troy, New York, was called Judge Burrows. Their son, Silas, afterwards lived here; he was interested in shipbuilding, and engaged in commercial pursuits in New York, and was also in the whaling and sealing business. He made several visits to Brazil and Hong Kong, China, where he established a commercial house; he left there in 1859 for the last time and made his home in this village, where he died in 1870. His children occupied the house as a summer home at various times, and it now belongs to his grandchildren.
Later used as a nursing home, the house is once again a private residence.
The house at 1075 Poquonock Avenue in Windsor was built in 1799 by Grove Clark. This could be Capt. Grove Clark (1766-1846).
The house at 234 Armstrong Road in Coventry, dramatically situated on a hillside, was built c. 1830. Originally the Stanley family farmhouse, the house was later the home of D. W. Huntington, who owned a silk mill along the nearby Mill Brook in the 1860s-1880s. Originally from Montville, Huntington had moved to Coventry in his youth. He had been overseer of a cotton mill and studied civil engineering. In 1874, Huntington and William A. Hempstead patented an improvement in water-meters.
The house at 144 Main Street in Farmington was built sometime between 1771 and 1797. In the former year, the land was acquired by John Case, who died in 1791. Originally from Simsbury, Case made hats with his son Coral, for whom he may have bought the land. The house was built by either Coral, who died in 1800, or his father. In 1810 it was acquired by Richard Cowles (1786-1845), a prominent citizen who served as town treasurer (1832-1839) and state representative (1834).
The following description of the Burnside Methodist Episcopal Society appears in East Hartford: Its History and Traditions (1879), by Joseph O. Goodwin:
The first meeting-house of the church society in Scotland [the original name for the area called Burnside in East Hartford] stood on the street just cast of the residence of the late William Hanmer. It was a plain brown house, built sometime before 1834, without cupola or steeple. It was moved back, and is now used on the Hanmer place for a horse barn. The site of the present meeting-house in Burnside was given to the society by Mr. George Goodwin. This church has now a fine organ, and a live and growing membership.
The church burned down on January 15, 1893. A new church was dedicated on March 14, 1894. The church, located at 16 Church Street, on the corner of Burnside Avenue, has been much expanded over the years, including an attached three-story brick education and fellowship building, completed in 1953. In 2006, the Burnside Methodist Church merged with the Hockanum Methodist Church to form New Covenant Methodist Church.
The Burrows House at Mystic Seaport, built between 1805 and 1825, was originally erected on Water Street, on the Groton side of the Mystic River. In the 1860s and 1870s, it was the home of Seth and Jane Burrows. By that time the house had been raised above a new story in which Seth Winthrop Burrows sold groceries. The house was dismantled in 1953 to make way for a bank and then reassembled at Mystic Seaport. (more…)
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