The house at 183 Prospect Street in Willimantic was built around 1887 to be the home of Arthur I. Bill, editor and publisher of the Willimantic Journal. He also had a printing plant on lower Church Street in Willimantic, having started the Hall & Bill Printing Company in 1884.
The house at 258 Bank Street in New London was built in 1833 (or as early as 1817?) with granite quarried from the ledge behind the building, known as Tongues Rock. Sailing ships would tie up at the shore at this granite outcrop. The building was constructed as the home and whaling office of Benjamin Brown, who produced soap and candles. According to an article (“Pioneers of Tilley Street Prominent in City Affairs,” by R.B. Wall) that appeared in the New London Day on February 13, 1815:
Benjamin Brown was a prominent figure in the whaling industry and he also had a slaughter house and candle factory. He cured beef and pork and shipped it in barrels to other places. After buying the Canada house in Tilley Street he bought considerably more land adjoining ion the west bounds. On this vacant land he used to store hundreds of barrels of oil while waiting for the market to advance. Benjamin Brown was a native of Waterford and came to New London a poor and friendless boy. The building connected with his enterprises once occupied the site of the coal ad lumber business of the F.H. & A.H. Chappell Co. in Bank street. His stone house alone remains on the east side of Bank street, opposite Tilley.
Brown’s property once extended to the water behind the house and had a well that supplied whaling and merchant ships. The house survived a fire that started during the 1938 hurricane and devastated Bank Street.
The house at 72 Broad Street in Guilford was built c. 1847 for Edward Sherman Fowler, who was born in 1817 in the house at 66 Broad Street to Samuel and Sophie Fowler. He soon moved to New London where he worked as a railroad conductor. In 1855 the Guilford Institute acquired the house and sold it in 1868. A later owner was Alfred N. Wilcox, who served in the Civil War as a sergeant in Co. G, 14th Regt., Connecticut Volunteers. Yet another owner operated a blacksmith shop on the property until 1968. Around 1870, a French Second Empire Mansard roof was added to the house, which had previously had a flat Italianate-style roof. The current front porch was added in 2003.
An ecclesiastical society in the village of Hanover, in what is now the town of Sprague, was incorporated in 1761. This led to the gathering of a congregational church in 1766. A meeting house was erected about the same time, in the center of Hanover. The current Hanover Congregational Church, at 266 Main Street, is a Greek Revival structure. I have not been able to determine if this building is the original church that has since been modified or a is a replacement built later.
The brick commercial building at 242-244 Main Street in Bristol was built c. 1873 to house the Bristol Savings Bank. Organized in 1870 by Miles Lewis Peck, the bank was previously located in a building that was destroyed by fire in 1873. Bristol town offices were housed on the upper floor of the building until the turn of the century. The space was then occupied by the Bristol Chamber of Commerce. The building is now home to The Shaffer Company, Inc., a mechanical contracting company founded in 1890.
Built around 1800-1802, the brick house at 200 Broad Street in Wethersfield is attributed to the local builder, James Francis. The Colonial Revival front porch is a later addition. The house was originally the residence of Dr. Abner Moseley (1766-1811). Born in Glastonbury, Dr. Moseley was a graduate of Yale. In 1814, his daughter, Eunice, married Winthrop Buck, the son of Daniel and Sarah Saltonstall Buck. Sarah’s sister Elizabeth was the second wife of Silas Deane.
According to Edward Sweetser Tillotson’s Wethersfield Inscriptions (1899), Dr. Moseley’s stone in Wethersfield’s Old Burying Ground reads as follows:
In Memory of Abner Moseley, | a Physician of skill & eminence, | who died Sept. 20-th A.D. 1811, | Aged Forty five. | His Wife Eunice who died Jan. 26 | 1811. Aged Forty three. | Their second daughter Hope, who | died Sept. 29-th 1806, Aged 11. | Their eldest son Robert, who | died Oct. 16-th 1811, Aged 17. | Their youngest Daughter Maria | who died Sept. 30-th 1818. Aged 11. | Their second Son Joseph died July 1 | 1838. Aged 40. Their third Son Walter | died July II, 1838, Aged 39. | Their eldest Daughter Eunice. Wife of | Winthrop Buck, died Aug. 24, 1862. Aged 69. | Their youngest Son William | died March 19, 1868. Aged 62. | Their third Daughter Harriet | died July 15. 1877, Aged 75. | Their fourth daughter Emily | died May 17, 1887. Aged 84.
The house at 1665 Main Street in Glastonbury was built, according to a beam over the attic stairway, by Joseph Kilbourn (1765-1851) in 1829. The brick front section of the house and the rear ell, which is of wood frame construction, have the same brick foundation. This is an unusual feature and may indicate that the house was actually built later than 1829 or that the brick section was moved to its current location.
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