J. & E. Stevens Company (1843)

J. & E. Stevens Company

A group of buildings surviving from the J & E Stevens Company manufacturing complex can be found on the north side of Nooks Hill Road in Cromwell. The J. & E. Stevens Company was formed in 1843 by brothers John and Elisha Stevens. The company, which operated into the mid-twentieth century, is noted for its manufacture of cast iron toys, especially mechanical iron banks and cap pistols. On the left in the image above, at the corner of Shadow Lane, is the earliest surviving Stevens factory building, a white-painted brick structure, which later served as the main office building (it once had a cupola, since removed). The adjacent brick structures to the right were erected sometime later in the nineteenth century: the Assembly Building (white-painted brick, center) and the Pattern Shop (unpainted brick, right). Across Nooks Hill Road is the factory‘s former 1865 foundry building (not pictured), which has been much added to over the years. Other structures that were part of the complex have since been torn down. The buildings above are now home to Horton Brasses, 49 Nooks Hill Road.

Eleazar Fitch-John Ripley House and Store (1755)

Eleazar Fitch-John Ripley House and Store

At 19 Windham Green Road in Windham Center is a house built c. 1755. It has an attached structure on the east side that was once a store. The house has a nineteenth-century Victorian rear ell and the store has an eighteenth-century rear ell. The combined structure is known as the Eleazar Fitch-John Ripley House and Store. Col. Eleazer Fitch (1726-1796) served in the French and Indian War and served as high-sheriff of Windham County from 1752-1776. He later moved into a new grand house in 1763 that was destroyed by fire in 1923. During the Revolutionary War Fitch was a loyalist, although he was related by marriage to Windham’s leading revolutionary Eliphalet Dyer.

Stephen Perkins House (1845)

Stephen Perkins House

The house at 24 Hurlbutt Road in Gales Ferry, Ledyard was built in 1845 by Stephen Perkins, a whaling master, on land he had acquired in 1844 from Ralph Hurlbutt. Perkins owned the house until 1859, after which it had a series of owners who rented the house to different tenants until it was purchased by Warren Stoddard, son of Charles H. Stoddard, in 1898. In the 1860s and 1870s the house was rented by Capt. Gurdon L. Allyn (1799-1891), who wrote the book The Old Sailor’s Story (1879) about his many whaling and sealing voyages. As related in the History of the Town of Ledyard, 1650-1900 (1901), by John Avery:

In May, 1861, Capt. Allyn obtained a commission as acting master and coast pilot in the United States Navy, and received an order in June, from Com. Dupont, to report for duty on the United States frigate, “Saint Lawrence.” He was a participant in the famous Merrimac and Monitor engagement at Hampton Roads, in March, 1862. He had an honorable career in the navy, and in due time was discharged on account of his age. His salary while in the service, and the prize-money and pension, which he afterwards received, were a great help to him in his declining years.

Gurdon’s son, Gurdon F. Allyn, became a farmer and auctioneer in Salem.

United Church of Chester (1870)

United Church of Chester

The Congregational Church in Chester had two meeting two meeting houses (the second of which, built in 1793, became the old Town Hall, now called the Chester Meeting House) before constructing a new church on West Main Street in 1846. The Baptist Church constructed their own church next door in 1870. The two churches merged in 1941 to create the United Church of Chester. The Congregational Church was moved and attached to the rear of the Baptist Church building (29 West Main Street) in 1948-1949 to serve the united congregation.