Historic Buildings of Connecticut - Exploring the Nutmeg State One Building at a Time

S. G. Davidson House (1882)

The older rear section of the house at 539 Litchfield Turnpike, intersection with Carrington Road, in Bethany was built by James Seymour Tuttle, a blacksmith and axe-maker. Tuttle’s grandson, Samuel Gilbert Davidson, hired joiner Thomas H. Brooks to built the front section, erected in 1882-1883. There are also historic barns attached to the rear of the house and a carriage barn across the road. The farm run by Davidson, also called Minnow Brook Farm, is described by an admirer in Bethany and its Hills (1905):

And now, concluded Mr. Sperry, we come to a model farm, one of the model farms of Connecticut, that of our friend S. G. Davidson, who is one of Bethany’s most honored and esteemed men. It is indeed a model of what thrift, good taste, enterprise, foresight and sagacity well employed can accomplish. With Mr. Davidson in charge, even a wilderness could be made to blossom like the rose.

There Davidson’s son, Tyler D. Davidson (d. 1952), a farmer like his father and a teacher, also served as First Selectman, Justice of the Peace and was a member of the Connecticut state House of Representatives. In the 1930s the house became the “Old Elm Tea Room,” named for a large Elm in front of the house planted by S. G. Davidson. An upstairs room was also used for singing classes held by some of the women of the family.

Tyler Davidson’s daughters sold the house out of the family in 1957.

Tremko-Stebbins House (1773)

The house on the right in the picture above is the Tremko-Stebbins House, located on Route 44 in the Warrenville section of Ashford. The building on the left is a former Post Office. The house was built c. 1773 by Thomas Stebbins Sr., who bought 1/4 of an acre from Benjamin Clark. The last owner of the house was George T. Tremko, who bought it in 1946 from Abbie M. Balch (she served on the Ashford Board of School Visitors, to which she was elected in 1898). It was known as the post-master’s house because the Tremko’s were involved with the post office next door. The Town of Ashford bought the house via eminent domain in 1987 and there were plans to take it down and build a new library on the premises. The Ashford Historical Society helped to save the house and to acquire a grant to rehabilitate its exterior (this work was completed in 2014-2015). The town is waiting for another grant to rehabilitate the interior of the house, after which it can be used as a Museum and Tourist Information Center.

Thanks to Joan E. Bowley, Pres. of the AHS, for information on the house.

Elijah Sherman House (1791)

Not to be confused with another nearby Elijah Sherman House, the house at 50 Main Street South in Woodbury was erected by Deacon Elijah Sherman on land owned by Lee and Timothy Terrell. As related in the c. 1900 book Woodbury and the Colonial Homes:

The Sherman place is now occupied by Chas. Roswell, and the stone door step still bears the date May 19, 1791 A. D., chiseled on it. In the basement of this house, a tannery was located, later being moved across the street.

The house has been home to the Newell family since 1918.

Rev. Samuel Clark House (1759)

Reverend Samuel Clark (1729-1778), a Princeton graduate, was ordained in the Kensington Congregational Church in Berlin 1756 and then served as its minister until his death twenty-two years later. He built the grand house at 67 Burnham Street, one of the earliest brick residences in Connecticut, in 1759, but did not marry until 1766, when he wed Jerusha White. The latter part of his pastorate was contentious and the congregation split into separate societies in 1772. In 1773, Rev. Clark entered into a financially unsuccessful partnership, ending in a quarrel, with merchant Jonathan Hart. At the time of his death the Revolutionary War was underway and Rev. Clark was facing dismissal from his pastorate for suspected Tory sympathies. His house was next occupied by Rev. Benoni Upson, who succeeded him as minister. The Upson family lived in the house into the twentieth century. The house has a white-painted twentieth-century addition to the left of its front facade.

Silas Hawkins House (1795)

Silas Hawkins built the house at 410 Quaker Farms Road in Oxford c. 1795. This may have been the Silas Hawkins who was born in 1756 and died in 1844. The dormer windows were added later. A barn is visible behind the house in the image above.

Former Immanuel Lutheran Church (1894)

The German Lutheran Church in Seymour, later known as Immanuel Lutheran Church, was organized in 1893. A church building at 56 West Street in Seymour was dedicated on Thanksgiving Day, 1894. In the 1970s the church’s congregation moved to a larger building on Great Hill Road in Oxford. The former church on West Street, much remodeled, is now owned by the Valley Detachment of the Marine Corps League.

Elisha H. Holmes, Jr. House (1872)

The Italianate house at 4 Main Street (pdf) in South Windham was built in 1871-1872 by Elisha H. Holmes (1799-1886) for his son, Elisha H. Holmes, Jr. (1844-1915), known as “Harlow.” He is described in Vol. I of the Commemorative Biographical Record of Tolland and Windham Counties (1903):

Elisha Harlow Holmes, secretary and treasurer of the Willimantic Machine Company, and a member of the firm known as the Radial Thread Buff Company, is one of the active business men of Willimantic. Windham county.

Elisha H. Holmes, his father, came to Windham in 1818, and followed his trade of cabinetmaker, also engaging in farming. Later he had a grist and plaster mill at South Windham. [. . .] His wife, Lydia, was a daughter of Amos Dennison Allen, a cabinet—maker of Windham, with whom Mr. Holmes learned his trade.

Elisha Harlow Holmes was born in South Windham, Conn., July 13, 1844. [. . .] In 1889 was formed the Willimantic Machine Company, of which he is secretary and treasurer and a member of the board of directors, and to this business he devotes the greater part of his time. The business is one of the very successful institutions of the “Thread Company,” being so great as to necessitate the employment of a number of skilled workmen, about fifty people in all, in the production of silk and thread machinery.

Mr. Holmes is also a member of the Radial Thread Buff Company, of South Windham. The buildings occupied are nearly all of brick, and are located adjacent to the tracks of the New London Northern railroad at South Windham. They are lighted by gas made on the premises, and the works are operated by a twenty-horse-power engine. The products are old-style and patent buffs for polishing silver, bronze and all metals requiring high polish, and the machinery used in their production is of original design. adapted especially for the work. This machinery is unique in its construction, and embodies ideas on which Mr. Binns was granted patents in 1884. The patent buff wheel, while superior to the old style and unlike any other, is made with less labor, at less expense, and its manner of construction is such that almost no waste of material results. The wheels made by this concern are now used by platers, cutlers and manufacturers generally on fine work, throughout the United States and Canada; each year shows an increase in the demand for them, and from a dozen to fifteen people are employed in their manufacture.

On May 7, 1866, Mr. Holmes was married, by Rev. Clayton Eddy, of St. Paul’s Church, Windham, to Miss Sarah Wheeler Johnson, a native of Windham, who was born May 24, 1844, [. . .] In 1871 Mr. Holmes erected a handsome home on Main street, in South Windham, where he has since resided. The beautiful trees on that street were set out by Mr. Holmes’ father.