Henry Hooker House (1769)

The house at 111 High Road in the Kensington section of Berlin was built c. 1769 by Elijah Hooker (1746-1823), a direct descendant of Thomas Hooker, the founder of Hartford. The house was much altered in the mid-nineteenth century by Elijah‘s grandson, Henry Hooker (1809-1873), who added a new bracketed roof with dormer gable, a new entry portico and removed the old center chimney to create a central hall extending to the third floor. Henry Hooker was engaged in the carriage manufacturing business in New Haven, becoming the head of Henry Hooker & Co. in the 1860s.

Captain David Beecher and Hannah Perkins Beecher House (1762)

The house at 545 Amity Road in Bethany was built in 1760 or 1762. It faces south, parallel to the road, and is built into a hillside. It was originally owned by Captain David Beecher and Hannah Perkins Beecher. The earliest known conveyance of the property was in 1851 from Lysias Beecher to David Beecher and William M. Hull. It passed through other owners until Hubert W. Delano acquired it in 1946. It was conveyed in 1955 to Edna L. Delano (1890-1982), who had been an army nurse in World War One. In 1986, her sons, Hubert and William Delano, gave a parcel of land south of the house, called the Delano Sanctuary, to the Bethany Land Trust in honor of their mother, Edna L. Delano.

This post has been updated on March 26, 2021 with new information from the current owner (since 1986) of the house. The name of the post has also been changed from the “Lysias Beecher House” to the “Captain David Beecher and Hannah Perkins Beecher House” to reflect how it is listed in the State Register of Historic Places.

Adelaide Wilcox House (1852)

The house at 880 Hopmeadow Street in Simsbury, named for Miss Adelaide Wilcox, was built in 1852-1853 and has been owned by a number of prominent families associated with the Ensign Bickford Company. Originally having an Italianate design, the house was altered to the Neo-Classical Revival style around 1900. Also added was a third floor with a grand ballroom. Since 1950 the house has been the Vincent Funeral Home.

William Tully House (1750)

In 1745, William Tully of Saybrook divided his property among his heirs, with land at North Cove going to his son, also named William Tully. Soon after (c. 1750), the second William Tully built the house that still stands at 135/151 North Cove Road in Old Saybrook. Perhaps starting with just one room, the house has been much enlarged over the years. The house is also known as Heartsease, perhaps for the flower Viola tricolor that once grew in the yard. The name may also have originated during the period of time the building served as a summer house for female workers. At one time the house was known as the Whittlesey House for Captain John Whittlesey, who seems to have owned it at some point in the eighteenth century. During the Revolutionary War, on the night of August 8, 1779, a notable incident took place at the house. A group of Tories from Middletown had been caught having brought goods down the Connecticut River to sell to the British. Their confiscated merchandise was stored in the basement of the Tully House under the charge of the third William Tully, then 21 years old. As related by Mabel Cassine Holman in “Along the Connecticut River” (The Connecticut Magazine, Vol. XI, No. 4, 1907):

eight Tories came to the house and demanded entrance. Tully refused to open the door. Without further words it was broken in. Taking his old flint gun, Tully fired; the musket-ball passed through the first man, who still advanced, but the one directly back of him dropped dead. Tully turned upon the other six, wounding one with his bayonet; the remainder escaped by the windows. When the first man whom Tully shot discovered the ball had passed through him he dropped dead with one hand on the window and the other grasping a chest of tea.

The fourth William Tully was a noted doctor. Born in the house in 1785, he graduated from Yale in 1806 and then studied at Dartmouth Medical College, receiving his medical license in 1810. He practiced medicine in various places, including Middletown, CT and Albany, NY, before serving as professor of materia medica and therapeutics at the Medical Institution of Yale College from 1829 to 1842. As related in Biographical Sketches of the Graduates of Yale College, Vol. VI (1912):

For a time his relations with his colleagues were satisfactory; but eventually he was dissatisfied with his compensation, and imagined that there was a conspiracy to slander him, so that he ceased giving his lectures in the spring of 1841. His resignation of his professorship was not accepted until August, 1842. Subsequently he spent nearly a year in South Carolina, without his family. In the spring of 1851 he removed to Springfield, Massachusetts, where he died on February 28, 1859, in his 74th year. During his later years his professional occupation was mainly in consultation, and his circumstances were sadly straitened. He was buried in New Haven.

Dr. Tully was much respected during his lifetime as a particularly learned doctor and a research-oriented professor. As related in Sketches of the Old Inhabitants and Other Citizens of Old Springfield of the Present Century (1893), by Charles, Wells Chapin:

The late Noah Webster, D.D., in the preparation of his dictionary, acknowledged his indebtedness to Dr. Tully for important aid, in that he had the supervision of the department of the work relating to the subject of medicine. Dr. Tully died February 28, 1859, aged 73 years

In 2002, the Tully House was at the center of a preservation struggle between an owner who wanted to demolish it and preservationists.

Union Society of Phoenixville House (1806)

Phoenixville is a village in the town of Eastford. At the junction of Routes 44 and 198 (4 Hartford Turnpike) is a former residence that would become the Union Society of Phoenixville House. It was built in 1806 as the home of Smith Snow (1784-1842), a mill-owner. In 1858, Snow’s heirs conveyed the house to Lydia Clark, the wife of his nephew, Albert B. Clark (1825-1903), a shoemaker. Around the turn of the century, the house was already being used as a nondenominational Sunday School, which officially incorporated in 1907 as the Union Society of Phoenixville and purchased the building. It also served as a meeting place for the local community and by the 1940s was commonly known as the Community House. The building was moved a short distance west of its original location circa 1930 to accommodate highway improvements. The building was in use until 2000, but already before that time fewer events were being held and maintenance issues had made preserving the building difficult (by the 1960s the upper floor had become unsafe). The Union Society sold the building to the Town of Eastford in 2002 and it has since been the object of preservation efforts (the roof was replaced in 2009).