The house at 392 Jackson Hill Road in Middlefield was built sometime between January 1753, when John and Anna Wetmore Matthews purchased the land, and January 1755, when they sold it to Amos Miller. After Miller‘s death in 1777, the house had several owners. It was eventually purchased by Obed Stow (1767-1839), a shoemaker, in 1794. The house’s original central chimney has been replaced and the front portico was added later.
The Skinner family were wood turners in Middlefield in the nineteenth century. The house at 445 Main Street in Middlefield was built by Henry W. Skinner not far from his father Albert‘s turning shop, which was started in 1853 along the Beseck River. Henry’s grandfather, Horace, had also been a turner. Henry W. Skinner took over the family business after his father’s death in 1868. The year before, he had given his house to his mother Almira, who lived there until her death in 1882.
Elisha Sage (1755–1801), of the Upper Houses of Middletown (now Cromwell) served in the Revolutionary War. A mason, he built bridges and worked on the construction of the Old State House in Hartford. Sage married Martha Montague. His house, at 64 West Street in Cromwell, was built circa 1776.
The house at 350 Main Street in Cromwell was built around 1870 on land purchased by Stephen P. Polley in 1869. Born in Chatham (Portland), Polley and his brother, Hiram Nelson Polley, moved to Wilmington, North Carolina, along with Levi Austin Hart of Southington and established Hart & Polley, a machine shop and metals manufacturing company. Stephen P. Polley later returned to Connecticut and founded the Cromwell Dime Savings Bank in 1871. He served as Cromwell’s town clerk from 1872 to 1878 and again from 1879 to 1881. After he died in 1887, his widow Catherine (from North Carolina) lived in the house until her death in 1891.
The manufacturing village of Taftville in Norwich was established in 1866 and centered on the Taftville Mill, which later became the Ponemah Mill, the largest textile mill in the world under one roof. The company gave land to the village’s Congregational Society, which built the Taftville Congregational Church in 1904. The asymmetrical building has a shingled exterior.
Shubal Smith, an attorney, purchased property on Towne Street (now now 176 South Main Street) in Colchester in 1839 and around that time constructed a Greek Revival house. By 1854 the house was owned jointly by Smith and Enoch Brown and passed to Deacon Smith’s son George Smith in 1868. The house was sold to Norman Palmer in 1879. His heirs, Isabelle A. Worthington, Flora Brown and Etta Miner, sold the house to John Condren in 1912. The house’s front porch was added sometime after 1903.
The house at 105 Middlefield Road in Durham was built circa 1774-1778 for Thomas Lyman IV (1746-1832). A native of Durham, Thomas Lyman spent time in the south, where his family claimed a grant of land, before returning to Connecticut. He served as quartermaster of the First Connecticut Regiment in the Revolutionary War and as a delegate to the State Constitutional Convention in 1818. Lyman is said to have visited Thomas Jefferson for a week at Monticello and to have have entertained Lafayette at the house in Durham on several occasions. Lyman married Rachel Seward in 1771. The house was built on land that Lyman inherited from his brother Stephen, who died in 1775. It is a hipped-roof structure, which was uncommon for colonial Connecticut. Perhaps Lyman was influenced by his time in the South. The house remained in the Lyman family for many years. It was recently donated to the Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation, which has put the house up for sale, with the proceeds to be used to launch a new Revolving Fund for preservation projects around the state. (more…)
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