William Morris, founder of Morris Farms, built the house at 188 Broad Street in Wethersfield. His vegetable farming business was passed on to his son, John E. Morris, and then to John’s son, Frank H. Morris, who died in 2011.
At 101 High Street in the industrial village of Baltic in Sprague is a Queen Anne house, built around 1900. It is currently a two-family home.
St. Peter’s Episcopal parish in Plymouth was established in 1740. The parish’s first church edifice was built on the northeast corner of Plymouth Green in 1796. The church burned down in 1915, but was quickly rebuilt with a new design constructed of fieldstone. The stones were gathered by parishioners from their own fields and walls. In 1996, St. Peter’s merged with Trinity Parish in Thomaston to form St. Peter’s-Trinity Church. The former St. Peter’s Church in Plymouth then became the First Baptist Church of Plymouth. This congregation, which began its ministry in Waterbury in 1803, held its first worship service in Plymouth on the Sunday following Easter in 1997.
Frederick Ives (1832-1883) was an axle manufacturer in Hamden. Continuing the business started by his father, Henry Ives, he formed Frederick Ives & Co. with Willis E. Miller and George E. Ives during the Civil War. When George E. Ives left to partner with L.F. Goodyear, the company continued as Ives & Miller, later called the Mount Carmel Axle Works. Frederick Ives’ house at 478 Orange Street in New Haven was built in 1866. It has Indian-style columns of a kind favored by architect Henry Austen.
The general store at 534 Storrs Road in Mansfield was built in 1886 by Charles H. Weeks. Above the store was Elmwood Hall, where town meetings and events were held. John Starkweather briefly owned the store in 1897 before selling it to Alfred Oden, who ran it for thirty years. In 1906, Oden, who lived above the store, fired shots from the balcony at two escaping burglars who had just blown open the store safe. One of them left behind a derby riddled with shotgun holes! In 1928, Oden sold the store to Thomas Arthur Barrows and Gustav Clauson. After the latter died, Barrows bought his share. He was later joined by his sister, Gertrude Burnham, and for many years the store was called Barrows and Burnham. It is now known as the the Mansfield General Store. The Mansfield Center Post Office was located here from 1899 to 1954.
The brick house at 954 Main Street in South Windsor was built in 1805. There have been additions since that time. The house was built for Arnold Allen (1759-1846) of Massachusetts, a Revolutionary War veteran, the year of his marriage to Mary Elmer, who was born in South Windsor in 1775.
The Mansard-roofed house at 111 Whitney Avenue in New Haven (pdf) was built in 1870. It is known as the William H. Taft Mansion because the former President (1909-1913) (soon to be Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court) owned the house around the time of the First World War, although he never actually lived in it. He sold the house in 1921. Extensively remodeled in 2008, the house was recently used as the offices of Research Edge, an independent research firm, which later became Hedgeye Risk Management. More recently, the house has become home to the William F. Buckley Jr. Program, a Yale conservative group founded in 2010.
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