Jonathan S. Wilcox House (1830)

Housed at the William L. Clements Library at the University of Michigan are the diaries of Jonathan Samuel Wilcox (1791-1875), a Madison storekeeper. Covering nearly thirty years (1844-1875), the diaries document Wilcox’s business and religious activities (he describes his church attendance and evaluates the sermons he heard there, sometimes after attending three sermons at three different churches on the same day), as well as his political involvement. A staunch Democrat, Wilcox was hostile to abolitionists and opposed the Civil War. Several of his children and other relatives lived in Augusta, Georgia (collections of family letters are held by libraries at Yale and the University of Georgia. Wilcox’s own house, built in the Federal-style in 1830, is located at 558 Boston Post Road across from the Green in Madison.

Seymour Post Office (1916)

Occupying a dramatic site at the corner of Main and Deforest Streets in downtown Seymour is a Neoclassical-style U.S. Post Office (address at 91 Main Street) built in 1916. It is one of the many architecturally impressive post offices and other federal buildings built across the country under the supervision of James A. Wetmore, who served as Acting Supervising Architect of the United States from 1915 to 1933.

First Congregational Church of South Windham (1902)

The early religious history of the village of South Windham (part of the town of Windham) is provided by Richard M. Bayles in his History of Windham County, Connecticut (1889):

The only church of this village is an offshoot from the Congregational church of Windham. For twenty-five years, more or less, services have been conducted here on occasional Sabbaths or on week-day evenings. The old Fitch school house is used for religious services. This is a building once intended for a private school, and is rented of private owners for religious services. It stands near and is connected with the Warner House, a hotel of commodious size standing near the depot of the New London Northern railroad. It is now owned by Alfred Kinne. For a few years back religious services on Sunday have been omitted, but in March, 1888, a Society of Christian Endeavor was formed here, and in the following December a church was organized, which now numbers eighteen members. During the winter a revival occurred. Since December 7th, 1888, preaching services have been held every Sunday afternoon by the pastor of the old church at Windham Centre. A Sunday school is also maintained here.

Once this church, which was a branch of the Windham Congregational Church, was established in the village in 1888, a Ladies’ Missionary Society was also formed which began collecting for a fund to erect a church edifice in South Windham. As related in the Hartford Courant (“Church Dedication,” October 22, 1902):

President Guilford Smith of the Smith Winchester Company became interested in the project and it was very largely through the generosity of Mr. and Mrs. Smith that the branch society is now possessed of the beautiful church. The donations of Mr. and Mrs. Smith were supplemented by those of almost every one who resided in the village and by many who lived out of the place, but had it not been for the generous gifts of land and money by Mr. and Mrs. Smith it is not likely that the society would have realized its long cherish[ed] hope for many years.

The Courant article further concluded that “probably no manufacturing village of the size can boast of so finely appointed and convenient a church building.” The church, located at 361 South Windham Street, was dedicated on October 21, 1902.

John E. Cowles House (1844)

John Edward Cowles (1818-1898), prosperous farmer and a director of the Hartford bank, built the house at 47 Main Street in Farmington in 1844. When it was erected, the house was in the Italianate style. It was inherited by Cowles’ son, Henry Martyn Cowles (1845-1926), who was the New England agent for the M.H. Birge & Sons, manufacturers of fine wallpapers. The house was inherited by H. M. Cowles’ two unmarried nieces who sold the property to Rose Anne Hardy Day Keep in 1927. She and her husband, Robert Porter Keep, headmaster of Miss Porter’s School, extensively remodeled the house in 1927 in the Neoclassical Revival style, adding two-story porticoes with Corninthian columns on either end of the building’s street-facing elevation. Since 1968 the house has been a dormitory of Miss Porter’s School called Porter-Keep House.

Benedict Ives Homestead (1750)

The house at 257 Fenn Road in Cheshire is described in Edwin R. Brown’s Old Historic Homes of Cheshire, Connecticut (1895):

This old but well-preserved house is situated about one hundred yards directly south of the Silas Ives place. The main part was built by Nathaniel Ives in about the year 1750. Nathaniel was the youngest son of Deacon Joseph Ives, Cheshire’s first settler[.]

Nathaniel Ives had six sons who all served in the American Revolution. His son Jotham, according to Brown,

took an active part in the defence of his country, enlisting under Captain Bunnell of Wallingford, whose company joined Wadsworth’s Brigade to reinforce Washington’s army at New York. He was engaged in the battle of Long Island, August 7. 1776, and White Plains, October 28th, the same year; also accompanied Washington on his retreat through New Jersey. On his return from the war, he became part owner in his father’s house, and later received a deed for his entire interest. He married Lillis Fisk of Providence. R.I.

As Brown relates, their son,

Benedict Ives built the addition to this house and resided here until his death, at the age of 83 years. Uncle Benedict was well known throughout the town as a man fond of his books and a good story. His wife, Betsy Bristol (Aunt Betsy she was called), was noted for her hospitality to friend or traveler, and it was a common saying, by those who frequently passed her door, that “If we can reach Aunt Betsy’s by noon, we are sure of a good dinner.”

Osborn and Cheeseman Company Office (1910)

At 153 Main Street in Ansonia is a large former factory building that was built c. 1900 by the Ansonia Osborne and Cheeseman Company. As described in The History of the Old Town of Derby, Connecticut, 1642-1880 (1880), by Samuel Orcutt:

Osborn and Cheeseman conducted a mercantile business in Birmingham some years, and in 1858 went into the hoop-skirt business at that place, and removed to Ansonia in 1859. In 1866 the Osborn and Cheeseman Company was organized with a capital stock of $120,000. Charles Durand was president of the company until 1875, when he sold his interest in the enterprise. The company now manufactures a great variety of goods, such as sheet and brass ware, gilding metal, German silver, copper and German-silver wire, seamless ferrules, and other kinds of metallic goods, which are sold in all parts of the United States.

Attached to the factory on the Main Street side is a yellow brick Neoclassical Revival former company office building (pictured above), erected c. 1910 with a third floor added sometime later. The entire factory building is now known as the Palmer Building because Palmer Brothers Trucking was located there, with other businesses, from 1955 to 1985. The building was then acquired by the City of Ansonia, but remained vacant, except for the Doyle Senior Center on the ground floor, for years as the city tried to sell it to a developer. There are now plans to convert the property for apartments and retail use.

Windham Textile and History Museum (1877)

The Windham Textile and History Museum (411 Main Street in Willimantic) presents the nineteenth and early twentieth century history of Willimantic’s textile industry, focusing on the Willimantic Linen Company, whose former mill buildings are located just across the street. These mills were later owned by the American Thread Company. In 1985 they were acquired by developer Jonathan Dugan. The museum opened in 1989 in two buildings erected by the company in 1877 and donated by Dugan in 1986. One is the former company store (pictured above), which had a library for workers on the third floor called Dunham Hall. The other (pictured below) is called the Dugan Mill, the upper floor of which was added during the first decade of the twentieth century to be used as the headquarters for the American Thread Fire Brigade. It later became a meeting hall which was recently restored for use by the museum.