The first Methodist Church in Rowayton in Norwalk was formed in 1839 and originally met in a one room building until a new church edifice was built on the site in 1867 and dedicated in 1868. When first built the church was a white clapboard, wood frame structure. It was remodeled to its present form in 1907. The church is located at 5 Pennoyer Street, just off Rowayton Avenue. The street was named for Elias Pennoyer, who had donated the land for the church.
The exact date that the house at 101 Fair Street in Guilford was built is uncertain. It was the site of a seventeenth-century home built by Thomas Cooke, one of the original settlers of Guilford and a signer of the 1639 Guilford Covenant that established the town while the colonists were still at sea. The current house on the site was possibly built by Miles Dudley around 1707, after his 1705/1706 marriage to Rachel Strong, but may contain sections built earlier. Dudley purchased the property in 1702. The Greek Revival doorway dates to the early 1830s. (more…)
At 15 State Street in Guilford is the John Davis House, built in 1784. Since the above photo was taken in 2009, the house has been repainted.
Built circa 1847, the Greek Revival house at 19 Fair Street in Guilford was the home of Benjamin Corbin, Jr. (1819-1884). As described in the History and Genealogy of the Descendants of Clement Corbin of Muddy River (Brookline), Mass. and Woodstock, Conn. with Notices of Other Lines of Corbins (1905), compiled by Rev. Harvey M. Lawson:
Benjamin Corbin, Jr., was a well-to-do manufacturing druggist at Guilford, Conn., from which place he was elected to the state legislature in 1858 as an American Republican. He filled numerous political offices in the town of Guilford and also in East Haven and Fair Haven, to which place he removed in 1871. He was a leading member of the Congregational Church at Guilford. He d. Sept 4, 1884, at New Haven, and was buried in the Alderbrook Cemetery, Guilford, Conn., with the other members of his family.
At 244 Hartford Road in Salem is the Parsonage of the Congregational Church of Salem. It is a Greek Revival house built in 1856 with modern solar panels.
The house at 573 Main Street in Somers was built around 1840. It was the home of Judge Solomon Fuller, Jr. (1817-1889). The son of Solomon S. Fuller, who was a soldier in the Revolutionary War, Solomon Fuller grew up in Somers and studied law at Chillicothe, Ohio. He practiced law in Ohio for some years before returning to Somers, where he was both a farmer and an attorney. He was elected Town Clerk and Judge of Probate, serving for four years before moving to Olmstead, Iowa, where he had a saw mill and engaged in lumbering for about two years. Then he returned to Somers, where he was again elected Town Clerk, Treasurer, and Judge of Probate, holding the positions until his death in 1889. He also served in the state General Assembly in 1863. Fuller’s son, Charles S. Fuller (b. 1855), opened the “Elmwood House” and engaged in the hotel and livery business. After his father’s death, he sold the hotel and succeeded his father in being elected to various public offices, including Judge of Probate. In 1922 Charles’s son, Ernest Solomon Fuller (1879-1946), became the third generation of the Fuller family to serve as Judge of Probate. He also served in the Connecticut General Assembly, for twenty years as a trustee of the Meriden School for Boys, and for about forty years he was a member of the Somers Board of Education, usually as its chairman.
The house at 8 North Street in Plymouth Center was built c. 1835 by the Reverend Isaac Warren, a Congregational minister and founder of the Hart Female Seminary, which was located in the Storrs House across the street. A later resident of the house was George Pierpont, who served a term as town clerk in 1874. became a county commissioner in 1877 and was also a federal tax assessor. As related in the History of the Town of Plymouth, Connecticut (1895), compiled by Francis Atwater, Pierpont was the great-great-grandson of Rev. James Pierpont, the second pastor of the First Church in New Haven. He was also related to Rev. Thomas Hooker, first pastor of the First Church in Hartford, Rev. Timothy Collins, first pastor of the Litchfield church, and Caleb Humaston, one of the principal founders of the Northbury Society, now Plymouth.
The best blood of New England thus flowed in Mr. Pierpont’s veins, constituting him a member of that nobility, not of rank, wealth or title, but of intellect, of learning, of piety, of culture, and of character, which has been the foundation of New England’s greatness. The traces of this descent were manifest in Mr. Pierpont. Though denied the literary training which had characterized his earlier ancestry, he was a man of scholarly tastes, especially in the line of historical research, and kept himself well abreast of the general intelligence of the times. He was a man of strict integrity and of lofty honor, and scorned meanness and baseness in all its branches. He held at different times various offices of public trust, such as magistrate, selectman, and clerk of the town, judge of probate, and was a member of the State legislature. In 1861 he was appointed United States assistant assessor and continued to hold that office for eleven years or until it was abolished. In 1877 he was elected by the legislature county commissioner of Litchfield Countv. and re-elected to the same office in 1880. In April, 1840. Mr. Pierpont married Miss Caroline E. Beach, daughter of the late Isaac C. Beach, of Northfield, Conn., who was a devoted wife and helpmate for nearly thirtv-four years. She died January 18, 1874. His second wife was the daughter of the late J. Sherman Titus, of Washington, Conn. George Sherman Pierpont, his son, was born in Plymouth, in 1876, and is now being educated in Dr. Carleton’s family school in Bradford, Mass.
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