At 477 Simsbury Road in Bloomfield is a house built in 1791 by Joseph Burr. Flax grown in Wintonbury (Bloomfield) was used to make linseed oil and Burr had a linseed oil mill on Loeffler Road, which was then called called Burr Road. (more…)
In 1790, Captain Samuel Stiles (1757-1813), a veteran of the Revolutionary War, erected the house at 169 Melrose Road in East Windsor. As catalogued in The Stiles Family in America: Genealogies of the Connecticut Family (1895), by Henry Reed Stiles:
Capt. Samuel Stiles left the sum of $1,000 to the Scantic Parish (East Windsor) as a fund for the support of the Gospel ministry in that parish. He was also a prominent Free Mason. The following are the inscriptions on his gravestone, and that of his wife, in the Ireland St. graveyard in E. W.:
“Capt | Samuel Stiles | died of a consumption | 9th of January A.D. 1813 | His name will ever be gracious to all who knew him, especially to the congregation with whom he habitually assembled for divine worship. As a tribute of gratitude and as a testimony of respect to his beloved memory this stone is raised by surviving friends to mark the place where his body rests in the silence of the grave.”
“Mrs. Jennet, wife of Capt. Samuel Stiles, died Feb; 20, 1824, ae 62, as a testimony of respect to her beloved memory this stone is raised to mark the spot where her body rests, till it shall arise at the call of him who conquered death.”
In the Hartford City and County atlas of 1869 the house is listed as the home of J. M. Stiles. Quoting again from The Stiles Family, John Morton Stiles was
born at East Windsor, Conn., Jan. 11, 1818; married Dec. 14, 1843, Julia Ann (daughter of Eli and Rocksalena Allen) Gowdy (born Feb. 5, 1819), of East Windsor. He was a farmer at Melrose, Conn., where he died, April 12, 1886.
The was later the Melrose post office for about four decades.
Built c. 1790, the house at 67 Moodus Road in Middle Haddam was originally the home of Captain Ralph Smith (1761-1838), a retired sea captain who became a farmer and owned a gristmill, sawmill and distillery on a stream near his home. His children sold the house to Daniel McLean (1818-1877), a steamship steward, in 1867. Born in Bristol, Rhode Island, McLean had been a customs officer at New Orleans. Dr. George Lawson, who married McLean’s daughter Ida Louise in 1897, had his medical office in the house in the early years of the twentieth century. He used a room off the front parlor as his pharmacy. An interesting news item mentioning Dr. Lawson (“Sick Man Well Enough to Escape from Sheriff”) appeared in The Day on September 8, 1909:
Owing to the dilatory measures employed by the officers of the law, Henry Smith, the suspected murderer of his brother, William Smith, escaped yesterday afternoon from his home at Haddam Neck, shortly before the arrival of Sheriff Davis to arrest Smith. The suspected man said on Monday night, when he got a visit from the sheriff, that he was ill from malaria and the sheriff left him without making an arrest or leaving a man on guard.
Dr. G. N. Lawson of Middle Haddam was called by Smith yesterday afternoon and he arrived at the house about 1 o’clock. The man escaped between the time of the doctor’s call and that of the sheriff, which was about 5 p. m.
The house’s original hip roof and Federal detailing have since been removed.
The Queen Anne/Shingle style house at 220 Summer Street in Bristol was built in 1890 (as displayed on the side chimney). It was the home of Epaphroditus Peck (1860-1938), a lawyer who served as an associate Judge of the Court of Common Pleas for Hartford County, 1897-1912, an instructor at Yale Law School, 1903-1913, and a Representative in the state legislature, 1925-1935. He was a founder of the Bristol Public Library in 1891 and wrote A History of Bristol, published in 1932.
At 116-122 High Street in Bristol, dating to c. 1880, is one of the oldest apartment blocks in the city. An excellent example of Italianate architecture, it is (unusually for a building of its size) of wood frame construction. The 12-unit building was condemned by the City of Bristol in 2015 and the tenants were forced to move out. The property owner was then arrested for reckless endangerment and property maintenance code violations. A new manager later took over the property.
Near the intersection of Rimmon Hill Road and 10 Pines Bridge Road in Beacon Falls is a one-room school house traditionally believed to have been built in 1779, when Beacon Falls was part of Derby. It is more likely that the Rimmon School House was one of six built in 1830, when Beacon Falls was part of the town of Oxford. The school was in use until 1953, when Laurel Ledge Elementary School opened. For 24 years the former school was owned by Raymond Lafferty, who had been in the last class at the Rimmon School before moving to Laurel Ledge in forth grade. His father had purchased it not long after the school closed and used it for storage. Raymond Lafferty had an antiques shop in the building, which he sold in 2010. The new owners wanted to sell the building to the town, but the town could not afford it.
The John Wesley Pentecostal Church was founded in Manchester in 1897. In the fall of 1907 (“Holiness Meeting in Manchester; In Pentecostal Church of the Nazarene,” Hartford Courant, April 10, 1908) the church became part of the Church of the Nazarene, a national evangelical denomination that formed in 1907-1908 through a series of mergers between various holiness churches and denominations, with the western-based Church of the Nazarene merging with the eastern-based Association of Pentecostal Churches of America. In 1958, the Manchester Church of the Nazarene moved from their original 1898 church at 466 Main Street to a new church at 236 Main Street. It was the culmination of a five-year building plan that included construction of a youth center (1954) and a parsonage (1957). The church’s pastor, Clarence E. Winslow, designed the buildings and prepared landscaping plans, personally clearing the land with the help of volunteers. Groundbreaking for the church occurred in the summer of 1957 and the following April (“Steeplejack Chore Planned by Pastor,” Hartford Courant, April 21, 1958) Rev. Winslow was lifted 90 feet by a giant crane to place a cross on the newly raised steeple. Rev. Winslow later moved to Florida where, in the 1970s, he led supporters of Creationism against the teaching of Evolution in Florida schools.
The Church of the Nazarene opened the Cornerstone Christian School in 1981. A new church building was erected at 218 Main Street in 1989, with Rev. Phillip Chatto this time attaching the cross at the top of the steeple (“Crowning touch installed at Manchester church,” by Randy Burgess, Hartford Courant, March 29, 1989). The previous church, now called the McLain Building, became part of the Cornerstone Christian School, housing the junior and senior high schools, and the former sanctuary was converted into a fellowship hall and gymnasium.
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