Jeremiah Shailer (1770-1845) built the house at 168 Camp Bethel Road in Haddam around the time of his marriage to Jerusha Shailer (1766-1843), i.e. just before 1800. Their daughter, Maria, married Smith Clark and her son, Jared Shailer Clark (1824-1888), a farmer and teacher who held the office of constable and justice of the peace, later occupied the house. The house’s original Federal-style doorway was later removed.
The Woodbury United Methodist Church, located at 4 Church Street in Woodbury, was erected in 1839. It replaced an earlier church the Methodists had built on the same site in 1824. The origins of the church are described in the History of Ancient Woodbury (1854) by William Cothren:
About the year 1790, before the general conference was formed in 1792, the first Methodist sermon in Woodbury was preached in the open air, in the street under the Rock, on which the Masonic Hall stands, by Rev. Samuel Wigdon, who was sent to preach in Litchfield circuit. This town was added to that circuit, and there was occasional preaching here after that to such as would “hear the word.” The first class was formed some time between the date of the first sermon and the year 1800. The church continued in a feeble condition till 1812, when Elijah Sherman, senior, better known to the people of this communion, and of the town, by the name of ” Father Sherman,” became dissatisfied with the Episcopal church, on account of some difference of opinion, as is understood, in relation to the adoption of the Episcopal church constitution, joined the Methodist denomination, and became very active and zealous in advancing its interests. The exact date of this transaction is not now at hand, but he was appointed the first regular class leader in 1812. Previous to this, the several ministers who had officiated here, had fulfilled the duties of that office. At this organization of the class, in 1812, the number of communicants was forty. From this time till 1824, “Father Sherman” threw open the doors of his house, and it became the place of public worship for this church. Having increased in numbers and means, they erected the first meeting-house on the site of the present church edifice, in 1824. But the class and social meetings of the society continued to be held at the house of Mr. Sherman, till the erection of the present commodious church, in 1839. This edifice is furnished with a good basement, and from that date the social meetings of the church have been held in it. The society here continued to constitute a part of some other circuit till 1832, when the circuit of Woodbury was formed, and this became the place of residence for its ministers.
In 1878 the church building was turned 90 degrees to face Church Street instead of Main Street and 21 feet in length were added to the rear.
Bean Hill is a neighborhood in Norwich that was a local commercial and manufacturing center in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The area was home to the ancestors of several nineteenth-century US presidents: Millard Fillmore, Rutherford B. Hayes and Grover Cleveland. The home of President Cleveland’s grandfather, William Cleveland, a silversmith and deacon of the Congregational Church, does not survive, but there is a Fillmore family house at 8 Huntington Avenue, across from the Bean Hill Green. The house was built around 1743 (the date is inscribed on the house’s central chimney). Millard Fillmore‘s great-grandfather, Capt. John Fillmore, Jr. (1701-1777), lived in Norwich and later settled in Norwich West Farms (now Franklin). Millard Fillmore‘s grandfather, Nathaniel Fillmore, Sr. (1738-1814), and grandmother, Hepzibah Wood (1747-1783), were both born in Franklin and lived in Norwich. Another relative of the President, also a great-grandson of John Fillmore, Jr., was Rev. Jehiel Fillmore (1797-1862), who was born in Franklin and lived at Bean Hill.
I would like to know more about the house at 11 Dudley Street in Norwich. The plaque on the house gives it a date of 1729 and calls it “Woodside.” The style of the house was obviously much altered in the nineteenth century, as it now has features, such as the front portico, the brackets and the curved windows in the gable end, that are typical of the Italianate style. The property also has a large barn, which is listed on Historic Barns of Connecticut (with an address of 8 Dudley Street), but without much information about the structure. Perhaps it dates to the time the house was altered in the Italianate style, as the barn has an Italianate cupola.
In 1819, on Washington Green, a meeting house was constructed on the site where the Judea Parish House stands today. The building had a large upstairs space for town and church meetings and the walls were lined with shelves that held the town’s first library. The first floor had several rooms. These were used for a time by the Judea Female Seminary, run by Mary Brinsmade, sister-in-law of Frederick W. Gunn, founder of the Gunnery School. In the 1870s, Gunn moved the building to its current location (16 Kirby Road), attaching a former one-room district school house to the rear. After Gunn‘s death in 1881, the house was the residence of his widow, Abigail Irene Brinsmade Gunn, familiarly known to Gunnery students as Aunt Abbey. For several years the house was a dormitory for the Gunnery School known as The Abbey. In 1912 it again became a private residence. It was remodeled by its new owners, who added a north wing around 1919-1925.
Various construction dates can be found for the house at 19 Long Hill Road in Middle Haddam (in the Town of East Hampton). In the National Register of Historic Places nomination for the Middle Haddam Historic District, it is listed as the Benjamin Clark House, built in 1827. Clark sold the property a few years later. Steamboat captain Heman H. Crosby lived in the house in the second half of the nineteenth century. In the twentieth century it became the home of Raymond Peck, an engineer at Pratt & Whitney, and his wife, Helen Bates Peck. After her husband’s death in 1969, Helen Peck (1909-2008) continued to reside in Middle Haddam. According to her obituary in the Hartford Courant she was an active volunteer and a historic resource who was instrumental in Middle Haddam being listed in the National Register of Historic Places. In her later years, Peck was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. A 2003 article in the Hartford Courant (“Neighbors Stir Up A Probate Debate,” by Gregory Seay, May 17, 2003) describes issues that some neighbors had with renovations made to the property (called Mulberry Farm) by Peck’s court-appointed conservator. The article describes the house as being 155 years old (giving it a date of 1848). The sign in front of the house reads: “Mulberry Farm Circa 1841 Helen B. Peck.”
The house at 18 Totoket Road in Branford was built c. 1860-1875 for Charles Pomeroy Ives (1847-1933). An 1872 graduate of Yale Law School, Ives was a lawyer and farmer (also described as a “farmer-philosopher”) who was the first in Connecticut to market milk bottles. He had a 200-acre dairy farm in Branford called Fellsmere Farm. In 1933, at the age of 87, Ives went missing from his farm. His body was found three days later a mile-and-a-half from his home. He had died from exhaustion and exposure. Starting in 1983 the house was substantially altered: the windows, siding and other exterior features were replaced and the interior was gutted.
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