Historic Buildings of Connecticut

Reverend Benjamin Trumbull (1735-1820) was a notable Congregational minister and an early American historian. Born in Hebron, he graduated from Yale in 1759 and then studied under Reverend Eleazer Wheelock. Ordained in 1760, he was pastor in North Haven for sixty years and also served as a chaplain during the Revolutionary War and in 1777 as a captain of sixty men from Mt. Carmel (Hamden) and North Haven. Rev. Trumbull was the author of a number of works. He wrote a series of letters in the Courant in support of Connecticut’s claim to the Susquehanna purchase. These were collected in a pamphlet published in 1774 entitled A Plea, In Vindication of the Connecticut to the Contested Lands, Lying West of the Province of New-York. Rev. Trumbull also wrote a Complete History of Connecticut from 1630 till 1764, a two-volume work published in 1797. He labored many years on his three-volume General History of the United States of America, only completing the first volume, which was published in 1810. He was awarded a D.D. degree from Yale in 1796.

Rev. Trumbull’s house, which faces the Green in North Haven, is discussed in Vol. 1 of J. L. Rockey’s History of New Haven County (1892):

It was in the summer of the latter year [1760] that he came to North Haven church, and November 14th was ordained as its pastor. The following year he purchased a tract of land of Joseph Pierpont, and began the erection of a dwelling house upon it. The old mansion is still standing and in excellent repair. It is the property of Hon. Ezra Stiles, who has occupied it something more than 60 years. As a historic point, there is none greater in the town. The great double doors were ever ajar. Over its threshold were ceaselessly trooping scores of busy feet. Ministers, messengers, committees, referees and strangers made it a religious caravansary and rested in its shadow. Hither came during the revolutionary war aids and officers with despatches, and later eminent historians and theologists tarried within its walls.

The house is more fully described in North Haven Annals. A History of the Town from Its Settlement, 1680, to Its First Centennial, 1886 (1892), by Sheldon B. Thorpe:

It stood a few rods east of his meeting-house, upon the summit of a gentle ridge, and commanded a view of the entire village. The late Hon. Ezra Stiles owned it a little more than sixty years. Its admirable preservation to-day attests the work of the painstaking, careful builder of that period. The “Society Lott” doubtless furnished the lumber. The frame of the building is of oak, dimensions 28×35. The timbers are massive and hard as iron. The covering of rent oak clapboards, smoothed beaded and jointed to a line, has defied heat and cold, sun and storm, upward of a century and a quarter and is apparently good for another term of service full as long. Exteriorly, with the exception of a bay window on the southern end, the old parsonage is as the aged divine left it. The quaint mouldings and devices surmounting windows and doors attest that unusual ornamentation was bestowed upon it. It presented a striking contrast to the humble domicile on the plain below where the Rev. Mr. Stiles [Rev. Trumbull’s predecessor] lived, and was indeed what it came at length to be called, “the quality house” of the village. Every part was builded for service, and long service at that. The enormous chimney contains a mass of material. Six separate flues connecting with as many wide fireplaces are constructed within it, and it is five feet square where it emerges from the roof, while its base, hidden deep in the earth, covers probably not less than one hundred square feet. The original color of the mansion was red, White houses were uncommon until after the year 1800, and only two places in the town had blinds for their windows in 1829.

Thorpe also attests to the many visitors Rev. Trumbull entertained at the house:

The great double doors of this hospitable mansion were ever ajar. Over the threshold tradition tells us, were ceaselessly trooping many busy feet, and its owner soon became widely known. Ministers and messengers journeying to and fro to religious gatherings, took roundabout roads to call on this rising divine. Referees, committees, consociations, came to test his judgment and his wife’s hospitality, both exhaustless. As he came in later years to be still more widely celebrated, the calibre of his visitors increased. Many an eminent man visiting Yale college thought his mission far from complete until he had ridden out to North Haven and Visited “Dr. Trumbull.”

Possibly the oldest continuously occupied residence in North Haven is the Bassett House at 3 Ives Street at Outer Ridge Road, part of property owned by Captain John Bassett from 1695 c. 1714, which had buildings on it when divided by his sons in 1719. The rear section of the western half of the house (a “half-house”) was probably in existence by 1720, by which time it was owned by Captain Bassett’s son, Joseph Bassett. By the time of his death in 1761, Joseph Bassett had expanded the house into a “saltbox” form. His son, Joseph Bassett, Jr., served in the Revolutionary War and was wounded during Tryon’s Raid on New Haven in 1779. He expanded the house by building another half-house on the eastern side. His son, Jacob Bassett (1775-1844), a prominent citizen of North Haven, updated the eastern section in the Federal style, raised the roof to two-and-a-half stories and moved the front entrance to the north gable. The house passed from the Bassett family around the time of the Civil War. Edward E. Minor acquired the house in 1918 and worked with architect C. F. Townsend to restore the house, an early example of a historically accurate restoration.