First Church of the Nazarene (1913)

First Church of the Nazarene

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).

Daniel Glazier Tavern (1815)

Daniel Glazier Tavern

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.

Jacob Wilson Tavern (1735)

Jacob Wilson Tavern

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.

Orlando Bolles House (1847)

22 Hurlbutt Rd., Gales Ferry, Ledyard

The house at 22 Hurlbutt Road in Gales Ferry was built by Orlando Bolles (1807-1895), a whaling captain. He had purchased the land on which the house stands in 1844, before setting out on a two-year journey on the whaling schooner Exile. After his return he built the house in 1847, but sold it just three years later to William Fitch of Montville, a relative of his wife, Ellen Fitch. In 1856, the house was acquired by Bolles’ daughter, Harriet, and her husband, Charles L. Crandall. After her husband’s death in 1875, Harriet and her sister, Annie Bolles Pierce, spent their summers at the house in Gales Ferry and their winters in New York. After Harriet’s death in 1926 the house passed to her sister, who died in 1941. She willed the house to the New England Southern Conference of the Methodist Church, which then sold it to Courtland Colver, Sunday School Superintendent.

Dr. Joseph W. Alsop III Cottage (1880)

21 Pettipaug Ave

The summer cottage at 21 Pettipaug Avenue in the Borough of Fenwick in Old Saybrook was built c. 1880 for Dr. Joseph Wright Alsop III (1838-1891). The Alsops were a prominent family in Middletown: His grandfather, Captain Joseph Wright Alsop I (1772-1844), and his father, Joseph Wright Alsop II (1804-1878), were wealthy merchants; his son, Joseph Wright Alsop IV (1876-1953), married a niece of Theodore Roosevelt and was a politician and farmer in Avon; and his grandson, Joseph Wright Alsop V (1910-1989), was a journalist and top insider in Washington, DC politics. In later life Dr. Joseph W. Alsop III, a democrat, served in the state Senate and was involved in the political deadlock over the gubernatorial election of 1891. After giving an impassioned speech he collapsed at the rostrum and died of a heart attack. The cottage passed from the Alsop estate in 1903 and was acquired by Morgan B. Brainard of Hartford, whose former Fenwick cottage had been destroyed in the Hurricane of 1938. It was acquired in 1959 by his niece, Lucy Brainard Smith. You can read more about the cottage in Marion Hepburn Grant’s The Fenwick Story (Connecticut Historical Society, 1974), pages 122-128. (more…)