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.
Salem Congregational Church Parsonage (1856)
Solomon Fuller, Jr. House (1840)
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.
Warren-Pierpont House (1853)
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.
South Britain Congregational Church (1825)
Having made the trek to the Congregational church in Southbury each Sunday for three decades, residents of the South Britain section of town petitioned the General Assembly to have four months of winter preaching near their own homes. The South Britain Ecclesiastical Society was formed in 1766 and built a meeting house on the Green in 1770. The current South Britain Congregational Church, located at 693 South Britain Road north of the first building, was built in 1825. The interior was renovated in 1869, when the pediments over the three front doors were also changed from semi-circular fanlights to one curvilinear and two triangular pediments (more in keeping with the Greek Revival style).
Dr. J. W. Felty House (1910)
Tomorrow is the 34th Annual Mark Twain Holiday House Tour, which features several houses in Hartford/West Hartford and the Hartford Club. One of the houses on the tour is located at 734 Prospect Avenue. A Queen Anne house, it was built in 1910 for Dr. J.W. Felty, a prominent surgeon. The Kansas City Journal of June 30, 1897 noted:
Dr. Felty Leaves Kansas. Abilene, Kas., June 29. (Special ) Dr. J.W. Felty. vice president of the State Medical Society and of the Association of Santa Fe Surgeons, left today for Hartford, Conn., where he will locate. He has practiced in Abilene for thirteen years and is one of the best known physicians in the state
Dr. Felty‘s Hartford house was designed by Isaac Allen, Jr. and the original blueprints are now at the Connecticut Historical Society.
Mention of Dr. Felty’s work can be found in an article written by his colleague, Dr. Thomas N. Hepburn, a urologist who was the father of Katharine Hepburn, “Clinical Tests of Kidney Function” in the Yale Medical Journal of March 1912 (Vol. 18, No. 7):
Unilateral Kidney Disease. Under the heading of unilateral kidney diseases come the tubercular kidneys, the renal calculi, hydronephrosis, pyonephrosis, and pyelitis. In tests of this class of cases, ureteral catheterization, in order to compare the work of the two kidneys, is essential. It is necessary not only to make a diagnosis of the condition of the diseased kidney, but, more important still—and here is where any test that lends itself to quantitative estimation reigns supreme—it is necessary to know whether the other kidney is capable of functioning for both. A case of multiple calculi, sent me by Dr. Felty of Hartford, illustrates the point here made. From the appearance of the X-ray plate, made by Dr. Heublein, Dr. Felty was sure the kidney should be removed if possible. He wished to know how well the other kidney was functioning. With double ureteral catheterization, I found that the man excreted no phthalein from the diseased kidney, and the other kidney showed an output of 40 per cent. in one hour. Dr. Felty removed the diseased kidney, and the man made an uneventful recovery.
Dr. Felty had a second home in Florida. A notice in the Winter Park Post of September 2, 1920 states:
Dr. and Mrs. J. W. Felty with their son, Dr. A. R. Felty, of Hartford, Conn., spent three weeks here during August renovating their new home on Interlachen Avenue, purchased from Mrs, Rogers. The interior has been newly papered and other improvements added to the House and grounds. Plans are in the hands of an architect for a veranda and pergolas, which will be built when Dr. and Mrs. Felty come down in February. Dr. Felty is a distinguished surgeon of his home city and his son, who is a graduate of Yale and Johns Hopkins, is one of the house physicians in Johns Hopkins Hospital. Dr. Felty’s daughter married a brother of Mr. Woolley, son-in-law to Mr. E. W. Brewer of this place. Dr. and Mrs. Felty greatly enjoyed their visit here and declared themselves delighted with their new property, which is in the choicest residential district of town.
As mentioned in the excerpt above, Dr. J. W. Felty’s son, Dr. A. R. Felty, was a doctor at Johns Hopkins. Felty’s syndrome, a medical condition, is named for him.
Captain David Sage House (1720)
Built circa 1720, the Captain David Sage House, at 1276 Worthington Ridge in Berlin, remained in the same family until the 1970s. The Sage family donated the land for Sage Park in Berlin. In her History of Berlin (1916), Catharine Melinda North gives the text of a letter, dated January 29, 1906, from Mr. George Sage:
My dear Miss North: It is a pleasure to reply to your request for a history of our farm house. The Sage house was built about the year 1720 by Captain David Sage, (son of John and grandson of David who settled in Middletown in 1652,) who, with his twin brother Benjamin, came to Berlin from Middletown. It might be well to add here that Benjamin’s house built at the same time, stood below David’s and just south of the Clark place. Benjamin Sage married Mary Allen of Berlin, and died in 1734; his house has long since disappeared.
Captain David married Bathsheba Judd of Berlin and they had four sons and four daughters. One son, Deacon Jedediah, married Sarah Marcy of Berlin and remained on the present Sage farm. Another son, Zadoch, lived almost directly across the road from Benjamin, and the old well is now near the site of the house, a few rods north of where the brick schoolhouse stood. As time went by the Sage house was filled with the deacon’s four sons and three daughters, so Captain David moved into the house built by his brother Benjamin and was ninety-three years old when the road was built west toward Mr. Welden’s. I believe Jedediah was deacon of the Second Congregational church for twenty-seven years. He died in 1826 aged eighty-nine years.
Colonel Erastus, his son, married Elinor Dickenson of Berlin and succeeded to the farm where ten children were born to them, my father, Henry, being the one who stayed at home. I have my grandfather’s papers among which is his appointment by the General Assembly to be Colonel of the 4th Regiment of cavalry in the militia and signed by Oliver Wolcott Esq., as governor, and dated the 31st day of May 1819.
The property has been in the family about 186 years, and for five generations. The house has been added to from time to time, but the original has been well preserved with its huge stone chimney, four fireplaces, brick ovens, and the hewn white oak timbers forming the framework are as solid today as when they were raised almost two hundred years ago. Yours sincerely, Geo. H. Sage.
Miles Blackstone House (1831)
The Greek Revival house at 18 Pine Orchard Road in Branford was built in 1831. It is known as the Miles Blackstone House. This may be the same Miles Blackstone (1806-1875) who is described in Vol. II of A Modern History of New Haven and Eastern New Haven County (1918):
Miles Blackstone was for years an active and honored resident of the town of Branford, where he was prominently connected with agricultural interests. He was born April 1, 1806, [. . . . He] spent the days of his boyhood and youth in Branford and was indebted to the public school system of the locality for the educational opportunities which he enjoyed and which qualified him for life’s practical and responsible duties. He was early trained to farm work and became much interested in that pursuit, which he chose as a life vocation. He concentrated his entire time and attention upon farming and kept in touch with the most progressive methods of planting and developing his crops. Industry, economy and unswerving integrity were among his sterling traits and brought to him a gratifying measure of success as the years passed on. He brought his fields under a high state of cultivation and added to his place many modern improvements. The latest machinery was used to facilitate the work of the fields and his labors were at all times most intelligently directed, so that substantial results followed his work.
[. . .] He passed away in the faith of the Episcopal church, of which he had long been a devoted member. He always attended the church services and contributed liberally to its support. His political endorsement was given to the republican party and he kept well informed on the issues of the day, which he studied closely, so that he was able to support his position by intelligent argument. Of him a contemporary biographer has written: “Mr. Blackstone was a most unassuming and modest gentleman of the old school, with a kindly heart, and was greatly honored and respected in the community in which he lived.”
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