Historic Buildings of Connecticut - Exploring the Nutmeg State One Building at a Time

Anson Bray House (1835)

South Britain is a village in Southbury. At 636 South Britain Road is a house that once served as the village post office. As related in South Britain Sketches and Records (1898) by W.C. Sharpe:

Anson Bray was a blacksmith by trade but kept a hotel in South Britain for many years, and for forty years was postmaster.

He first married Betsey Plant of Rochester, NY. His second wife was Ellen Pierce, of South Britain.

Among the pillars of those days was Anson Bray, from time immemorial the village postmaster. His house, now occupied by Mr-and Mrs. James Adams, was probably more widely known and more frequently visited than any other in the village.

In addition,

Judson Bray, son of Stephen B. and Hannah Bray, removed to Bridgeport, but later returned to South Britain and with his brother Anson started the saddletree business in the old shop just back of Anson Bray’s house, and continued the business there for some years.

The Anson Bray House was built in 1835. It has a recessed wing that was built earlier.

H.E. & S.E. Canfield House (1810)

Built circa 1800-1810, the Miss H. E. & S. E. Canfield House is located at 524 South Britain Road in Southbury. A Federal-style house, its pedimented entrance porch is a later Greek Revival addition.

Graniteville, a section of Waterford, originated in the 1830s as a settlement of quarry owners and workers. Replacing an earlier district school that was located further west, the Italianate-style Graniteville School was built circa 1878. It is now home to the Waterford Boy Scout Troop 36.

Plume & Atwood Manufacturing Company (1853)

The oldest parts of the Plume & Atwood Manufacturing Company‘s factory in Thomaston date to 1853. In that year, clockmaker Seth Thomas, who was unhappy buying brass for his clocks from companies in Waterbury, built his own brass mill on the Naugatuck River. In 1869 a new company was organized, Holmes, Booth & Atwood, which purchased the factory with the agreement that they would continue to supply brass for Seth Thomas clocks. The founders of the company had left the Waterbury firm of Holmes, Booth & Haydens and Hiram W. Hayden sued them over the fact that their new company’s name resembled the existing company’s name too closely. In 1871, the new group took the name Plume & Atwood–David Scott Plume was the company’s treasurer. The factory buildings were severely damaged in the 1955 flood. Since the late 1950s, other companies have utilized the old factory. (more…)

Daniel Hubbard House (1717)

Daniel Hubbard (1697-1751) of Guilford married Thankful Stone in 1728. After her death he married his second wife, Diana Ward, in 1730. Their son, Bela Hubbard, graduated from Yale and became an Episcopalian minister, serving at Christ Church in Guilford and later at Trinity Church in New Haven. Their daughter, Diana Hubbard, married Andrew Ward. Their daughter, Roxana Ward, married Eli Foote. Their daughter, Roxana Foote, married Lyman Beecher and was the mother of Harriet Beecher Stowe and Henry Ward Beecher. Daniel Hubbard‘s house, at 51-53 Broad Street in Guilford, was built in 1717. Unusually large for its time, the house has a large wing that was added in 1872.
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Andrew Coe House (1843)

In 1843, around the time he married his cousin Caroline Coe, Andrew Coe purchased land from the estate of his father, Bela Coe, and built the house at 458 Main Street in Middlefield soon thereafter. Andrew Coe ground and burned bone for sugar refining at a grist mill on the Beseck River. When he died in 1854, his nephew Russell Coe bought the mill and inherited the house. In 1856 he sold the house to Albert Skinner, who had a wood turning shop on the Beseck River. The house once had a wing with a post office that burned in 1934. A wing with a pharmacy replaced it in 1936.

Former Baptist Church, Cromwell (1853)

Former Baptist Church/American Legion Hall

The building at 349 Main Street in Cromwell was built in 1853 as a Baptist church and later served as an American Legion Hall. The church was organized in 1802. According to Rev. Myron Samuel Dudley’s History of Cromwell (1880):

In 1803 the church built a plain frame edifice Meeting-House on the West Green, and held their public meetings there until 1833, when the house was moved to the central part of the village and placed on a lot nearly opposite the present site of the Post Office. Worship continued in this house until Nov. 3, 1853, on which day a new house of worship, located a little North of the old one, built during the pastorate of the Rev. C. W. Potter and largely through his instrumentality, was dedicated. This latter edifice was remodeled, somewhat, internally in 1872, and is the house of worship of the church at the present time.

The church disbanded in 1936 and the building’s steeple was removed.