John Moore House (1675)

John Moore House

John Moore (1645-1718), the eldest son of Deacon John Moore, built the central-chimney saltbox house at 390 Broad Street in Windsor in 1675. He had married Hannah Goffe in 1664. After her death he married Martha Farnsworth in 1701. By 1715 Moore had married his third wife, Mary. A description of the house from 1940 mentions that it had a new front porch and a bay window on the south. These later additions have since been removed and the house restored to a seventeenth-century appearance. (more…)

Second Eli Curtiss House (1840)

Eli Curtiss House

Eli Curtiss, a successful manufacturer of Panama hats in Watertown, married Alma Southmayd DeForest in 1832. Although Curtiss had a Greek Revival house, built in 1837 on North Street, he soon decided to erect a larger residence (c. 1840) at 90 DeForest Street on land his wife received from her father in 1839. The house is transitional in style, displaying Greek Revival corner pilasters and a Federal doorway. At one time the hip-roofed house also had a cupola.

Somers Congregational Church (2014)

Somers Congregational Church

The Somers Congregational Church began in 1827. The congregation’s first meeting house was located on the corner of Springfield and Stebbins Road, where the North Cemetery is today. After the first meeting house was destroyed by fire, a second one was built near the same location. By the time the third meeting house was built in 1840-1842, the center of town had shifted to the south, so the new building was constructed at what is now 599 Main Street. The Town of Somers agreed to contribute to the cost of the building, provided that space within could be used for town meetings. These meetings continued in the Foundation Room at the church until a separate town hall was built in 1950. Over the years the meeting house was expanded: Pilgrim Hall was moved from across the street and attached to the existing Meeting House in 1949 and a parish hall, the Bugbee Center, was built in 1960 as a separate building and later joined to the meeting house. On New Year’s Day, 2012 the 1840 meeting house section of the church was destroyed by fire. Plans were soon underway to rebuild the structure with a basically identical exterior appearance. Work began in September, 2012. In order to bring the building up to code, the congregation had to move the new building a few feet back from Main Street compared to its predecessor. The first service in the newly rebuilt sanctuary was held on Easter Sunday this year (2014). A new bell, designed to resemble the original made in 1850, was placed in the new building’s tower on May 1.

Thomas J. Clark House (1875)

Thomas J. Clark House

The grand Italianate house, now used for commercial purposes, at 263 Saybrook Road in Higganum in Haddam was built in 1875 as the home of Thomas J. Clark (1831-1910). He was a founder of the Higganum Manufacturing Company, later called Cutaway Harrow, which produced farm equipment. As described in The Conservative Advocate: a Book of Biographies of Connecticut’s Successful Men (1900)

Thomas J. Clark, Vice President of the Cutaway Harrow Company, is as well known as any man in Middlesex County. He was born in Haddam, September 21, 1831, and with the exception of two years spent in Georgia and Florida, has always resided there. He attended Rev. James Noyes’ private seminary in Haddam and then engaged in the business of stone cutting. Later he became a house builder. Since 1865 he has manufactured farm implements. He has been a life long Republican and is a member of the Congregational Society, He is president of the Higganum Savings Bank, a member of the Granite Lodge Masons and has represented his town acceptably in the Legislature. Mr. Clark is most highly esteemed and is a splendid type of the sturdy New Englander.

As further described in the History of Middlesex County, Connecticut with Biographical Sketches of its Prominent Men (1884):

When he was but 15 years of age, he commenced working in the quarries and doing odd jobs of mason work. The strong spirit of self-reliance and independence were manifested at this early age, and thee years later he started for Apalachicola, landing there in the fall of the year an entire stranger. He didn’t sit down, Micawber like, “waiting for something to turn up,” but soon after engaged as an assistant in the engineer’s department of a cotton pressing establishment. He soon learned to run an engine and earned good wages as an engineer. For two or three years he spent his winters at Apalachicola, and his summers at the north working at his trade as a stone mason. For several years after this he was engaged in the construction of important works at different places, among which was the Asylum Street Depot in Hartford, erected in 1848. He subsequently entered into partnership with his brother, George M., taking large contracts for the erection of bridges, mill works, factories, etc., the stone and mason work being entirely under his supervision. He was engaged with his brother in the erection of the Russell Manufacturing Company’s building at Higganum, and soon after this started with his brother the extensive manufacturing business now carried on by the Higganum Manufacturing Company.

Mr. Clark is modest and retiring in his habits, but possesses those sterling qualities which go to make up the solid men of our country. He has never sought political honors, but attended quietly to his business affairs, and has aided materially in the development of one of the most prominent branches of industry in this country. In this he is now, and has been from the commencement of the business, and important factor. He is vice-president and has the general management of the mechanical department of the Higganum Manufacturing Company.

On the 7th of December 1854 he married Elizabeth Quick, of Masthope, Pa., by whom he has had four children: Arthur, born August 2d 1858; Effie Elizabeth, born December 21st 1860; Alvan Thomas, born October 14th 1862; and Ada Selden, born February 24th 1871.

The death of the his first wife occurred on the 13th of July 1873, and on the 4th of November 1874 he married Sophia M. Warner, of Montrose, Pa. One child, Nina Gertrude, is the issue of this marriage.

Until quite recently Mr. Clark has taken no active part in public affairs, but during the fall of 1884 the people of his native town insisted on his accepting the position of selectman, which his long experience and thorough knowledge of the duties incident thereto fully qualify him to fill.