In the nineteenth century the area of Baileyville in Middlefield was an active industrial district. The building at 93 Baileyville Road was probably constructed around 1850 as an outbuilding for one of the mills along Ellen Doyle Brook. In 1876 it was converted into a residence by George W. Miller to house an employee of his phosphate mill. In 1921 it was purchased by the Lyman Gun Sight Corporation to house factory workers and their families.
John F. Butler (1840-1905), who was born in County Kilkenny, Ireland, founded the long-lived Butler Paint Company in Meriden in 1876. The store opened on June 25, 1876, the same day Custer made his last stand at the Little Big Horn. In 1892 Butler organized a joint stock company, taking a number of his employees into the new corporation. The store was originally located in the Horace C. Wilcox Block on Colony Street. As related in An Historic Record and Pictorial Description of the Town of Meriden, Connecticut and Men who Have Made It: A Century of Meriden “The Silver City.” (1906):
With a progressive spirit always characteristic of him, Mr. Butler in connection with the Meriden Furniture Co., in 1894, built the handsome block on Colony street which the John F. Butler Company now occupy.
Located at 51-53 Colony Street, the building housed the Meriden Furniture Company on one side and Butler Paint on the other. The Meriden Furniture Company went out of business in 1965, replaced for a time by the Music Box. Butler Paint went out of the family in 2001 and finally closed in 2011.
The First Church of the Nazarene, located at 932 Capitol Avenue in Hartford, was recently in the news when its pastor, Rev. Dr. Augustus Sealy, was wounded after being shot three times outside the church on May 24. Police have recently arrested a suspect. The Church of the Nazarene is an evangelical Christian denomination. Hartford’s congregation, officially organized in 1914, acquired the church building on Capitol Avenue in 1937. The building was originally constructed for the Olivet Baptist Church. First organized as a Sunday School on New Park Avenue in 1874, a wood-framed chapel was constructed on Park Street in 1888 and the church was officially organized in 1896.
The cornerstone of the new church on Capitol Avenue, designed by Johnson & Burns (a firm in business from 1908 to 1914), was laid on June 8, 1913 and the church was dedicated on February 15, 1914 (“CORNERSTONE LAID OF OLIVET CHURCH: NEW HOUSE OF WORSHIP FOR PARKVILLE Ministers of All Baptist Churches In the City Speak BUILDING TO BE WELL EQUIPPED AND COMMODIOUS,” Hartford Courant, June 9, 1913; “OLIVET CHURCH IS DEDICATED: New Building at Capitol Avenue Extension and Newton Street in Use OTHER CHURCHES TO LEND HELPING HAND All But $890.30 of $4,000 Debt Pledged–Church Mortgaged for $12,500,” Hartford Courant, February 16, 1914).
In 1936 the membership of the Olivet Baptist Church merged with the Memorial Baptist Church on Fairfield Avenue (“Olivet Merges With Memorial Baptist Church: Decision Made at Annual Meeting; Rev. M. L. Johnson Is Pastor,” Hartford Courant, April 4, 1936).
The late (1869) example of a Greek Revival style house at 217-219 South Main Street in Suffield was built for Newton Stoughton Pomeroy (1832-1905). In 1864 he was one of several agents going from Connecticut to recruit in the rebel states. He served as First Selectman of Suffield in 1899. The house is now divided into apartments.
The building at 7 Church Street in Roxbury, near the Green, was built circa 1840 as a hat shop by Frederick W. Lathrop. Hat making was an important cottage industry in Roxbury at the time, although industrial manufacturing supplanted it by the time of the Civil War. The building was later used as a residence.
Located at the west end of the Willington Green is the Daniel Glazier Tavern. Built around 1815, the first recorded tavern keeper was Daniel’s son Isaac Glazier. The last tavern-keeper was Fielder Heath, who bought the property in 1839. The second-floor ballroom was used for town meetings in cold weather until 1840. The Tavern is thought to have been a station on the Underground Railroad. Charles T. Preston, a lawyer and Civil War veteran, bought the former tavern in 1881. His life is described in The Judicial and Civil History of Connecticut (1895):
Born in Willington, Conn., August 7, 1834. He was educated at the Connecticut Literary Institute at Suffield. He studied law with Hon. Richard Hubbard at Hartford, and was graduated at the Albany Law School. Admitted to the bar in Hartford county in March, 1858. He settled in practice in Hartford, serving during a portion of the war in the Twelfth Regiment of Conn. Volunteers. In 1867 he removed to Willington, where he is chiefly engaged in literary pursuits.
January 15, 1869, he married Mary E. Marsh, of New York city; she died May 2, 1871, and October 8, 1874, he married Carrie A. Preston.
Since 2009 the building has been the home of the Willington Historical Society, which is restoring it.
At the northwest corner of the Boston Turnpike at 21 Bread & Milk Street in Coventry is a house built circa 1735 by John Wilson (1702-1773). After his death in 1773, the house passed to his son William (1729-1819), who married Sarah Rust, and his grandson Jacob (1749-1826), who married Hannah Dimmock in 1771. Jacob Wilson operated a tavern at the house from 1773 until 1817, when he sold the property to Joshua Frink.
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