Rev. John Wightman House (1770)

Rev. John Wightman House

Rev. John Wightman (1723-1781) was an itinerant Baptist minister, originally from Groton, who settled in Southington around 1770. According to Heman R. Timlow in Ecclesiastical and Other Sketches of Southington, Conn. (1875):

When Mr. Wightman came to Southington, Mr. Merriman [Southington’s first resident Baptist pastor] was already nearly eighty years of age, and to this veteran Christian the presence of such a sympathizing friend and ally must have teen the occasion of great joy. It is my own impression, but I cannot support it by documentary evidence, that Mr. Wightman had occasionally supplied preaching for the Baptist families in the vicinity of Bristol and Red Stone Hill, perhaps a few weeks at a time. When he came to settle permanently, he removed to the neighborhood of Mr. Merriman on what is now the west mountain road. His house was just north of the junction of the road leading from Wolf Hill.

A uniform tradition is that he was in poor health and could endure but little exposure. But the families of his charge were few in number, and there was but little pastoral work to do. During the last year or two of his life he was confined almost wholly to his house. He died of consumption, April 4, 1781. Before his death he had succeeded in having a burying ground laid out, not far from his house, on the Wolf Hill road, and he was the first to be placed therein. The inscription upon his tombstone is as follows:

“Here lies the remains of the Rev. John Wightman, who departed this life April ye 4th A.D. 1781, in the 55th year of his age.

The servant of the lord most high
Sent with the gospel from the Sky
In dreary shades of lonesome night
To spread the grace of heavenly light.”

All the information that 1 can get concerning Mr. Wightman represents him as a devout Christian man, and of amiable traits of character. Like all his family in the eastern part of the state he was on excellent terms with the “standing order.” There is no evidence of any jar between him and Mr. Chapman who was pastor and ex-pastor of the Congregational church, while he was here. And the families of Congregationalists and Baptists were on the best of terms. There is no evidence of the least alienation until after 1780. Backus says “Mr. Wightman was a shining example of uniform piety and benevolence, until death put an end to his useful life which he ended in the most joyful manner at Farmington” (Southington.)

Rev. Wightman’s house, at 1024 Mount Vernon Road in Southington, was built around 1770 (the date he purchased the land). Since the house has Federal-style features outside but not inside, it is possible the exterior details were added later.

David R. Sloper House (1760)

Sloper House

Robert Sloper of Branford moved his family to a farm in Southington in 1730. His son, Ambrose Sloper (1734-1822), who lived to the age of 89, built a house there in 1760. Having outlived his son, also named Ambrose, who died in 1810, Sloper left the farm to his grandson, David Root Sloper (1801-1887), who was a farmer and cement manufacturer. In 1831 he married Cornelia Bristol, who died in 1837 at the age of 24. His second wife was Eliza Augusta Woodruff. The farm was next operated by David R. Sloper’s daughter, Cornelia Sloper Neal (1851-1948), and her husband Lloyd Neal (1852-1878), and after Mr. Neal’s early death by William Orr (1858-1906), who was married to Cornelia’s sister Julia (1855-1922). After 1905, members of the Pocock family used the farm, which was willed by Cornelia Sloper Neal to the Southington-Cheshire Community YMCA in 1949. The farm has since developed into the YMCA Camp Sloper Outdoor Center (1000 East Street in Southington).

YMCA sources state that the Sloper house was built by Ambrose Sloper in 1760. Heman R. Timlow states, in his Ecclesiastical and Other Sketches of Southington, Conn. (1875), that David R. Sloper “owns and occupies the old homestead of his father and grandfather, on East street. Several years since he built himself a new house, which occupies the same location as the old one.” The house’s Greek Revival style also indicates a later date of construction.

John P. Jones House (1882)

John P. Jones House

The Stick Style/Queen Anne Style house at 1063 Main Street in South Windsor was for John Pantry Jones in 1882, the same year he was elected to the Connecticut General Assembly. John P. Jones was born in Hartford in 1832 and his family settled in South Windsor when he was fifteen. Jones was a prosperous farmer and tobacco grower who served in a number of town offices in South Windsor: Assessor, member of the Board of Relief, Selectman, and Agent of the Town Deposit and School Society Funds. He was descended from early settlers of Hartford. His grandfather, Nathaniel Jones, who served in the Revolutionary War, had a farm in Hartford near what later became State Street and Front Street. His father, John Pantry Jones (1791-1880), who served in the War of 1812, ran a retail grocery and oyster business in Hartford for thirty years and had a house at the intersection of State and Commerce Streets. In 1847 the family moved to their farm in South Windsor.

Powder Mill Barn (1845)

Powder Hollow Barn

Powder Hollow, in the Hazardville section of Enfield, was once the site of the Hazard Powder Company, which flourished in the mid-nineteenth century. The company furnished an estimated 40% of all the gunpowder used during the Civil War. Surviving friom the company’s original complex of buildings is a barn built around 1845. Constructed as a horse barn, it was converted by Ralph Sweet for Square Dancing in 1959. The Powder Mill Barn (also known as the Powder Hollow Barn) is also a popular rental hall for weddings, auctions and other events.

Second Baptist Church, Suffield (1840)

Second Baptist Church

The Second Baptist Church of Suffield was established in 1805 by members of the First Baptist Church. The original wooden church was replaced by a brick Greek Revival edifice in 1840, located at 100 North Main Street. The church was designed by local architect Henry Sykes, who had trained under Chauncey Shepherd of Springfield and Ithiel Town of New Haven. Additions were made to the church in 1953 and 1959.