Real Estate sites give the date of the Josiah Smith House, at 74 Elm Street, at the corner of Main Street, in Ansonia, as 1797. The house was built by Josiah Smith and was owned by several generations of his family before it was sold to Jonah Platt. It is a late Georgian/Early Federal style house with a fan light window above the front door and a later Victorian front porch.
The former residence at 208 High Street in Middletown was built sometime between 1859 and 1870. Its original appearance was in a different architectural style. It was a cross gabled building with projecting eaves and a Victorian porch. A one-story wing (later raised to two stories) was added to the rear in 1876. The brick house was built on a tract of land developed by Israel Bailey and was a rental property until 1892, when Jennie A. Bailey Sibley and her husband, Howard A. Sibley, acquired title to the property from other heirs of Israel Bailey. The house was altered early in the twentieth century when the current entrance porch and a classical pediment and cornice with modillions were added. The Sibleys occupied the house until 1920. The following year, it was acquired by Wesleyan University for use as housing. It is now Wesleyan’s Office of Public Safety.
One of the nineteenth-century houses in the village of East Plymouth (pdf), located on East Road in the Town of Plymouth, was built around 1839, most likely by James E. Johnson, a blacksmith.
Jesse Hart was a cabinet-maker, tavern-keeper and postmaster in Berlin. His brick house, at 203 Hudson Street, was built c.1800. It has chimneys at each of its four corners, with corresponding fireplaces inside. In 1813, he purchased the tavern at Boston Corners and became its landlord. As related in Catharine Melinda North’s History of Berlin (1916):
Jesse Hart, born 1768, married 1792, was a cabinet maker. Before he kept the hotel, at Boston Corners, he lived in the brick house, now owned by Leon LeClair. It is probable that he built that house. His first wife, Lucy Beckley, died in 1814 and, in 1822, he married, second, Mindwell Porter, daughter of Samuel Porter. Mr. Hart died in 1827, aged fifty-nine. Mrs. Hart survived him forty-eight years, and died July 6, 1875, aged ninety-one.
Hart was the half brother of Emma Hart Willard, a famous educator who began teaching in Berlin and later founded a school for girls in Troy, New York, that is now the Emma Willard School.
The church at 383 Hazard Avenue in Hazardville in Enfield was built as St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in 1863. Its erection was funded by Colonel Augustus G. Hazard, the gunpowder manufacturer who had founded Hazardville. In 1992, three Episcopal parishes, St. Mary’s Church, St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Thompsonville and Calvary Episcopal Church of Suffield, began cooperating as a regional ministry of parishes. In 2007, the three parishes merged to form Holy Trinity Episcopal Church, whose home is the former St. Mary’s Church.
The Goodwin Schoolhouse in East Hartford was built in 1821 by George Goodwin, Jr., a paper manufacturer. He built the school on his own property on Burnside Avenue and hired a teacher to teach his own children and those of his neighbors. A one room schoolhouse, the building was used as a school until 1855, when the students started attending town schools. The former school was moved to Martin Park in 1975 as a gift to the town from George Goodwin, grandson of the original builder. It is open as a museum operated by the Historical Society of East Hartford.
At 85 Boston Street in Guilford is a colonial saltbox house, believed to have been built around 1735 by Thomas Burgis, Sr. for his eldest son. Thomas Sr. was a shoemaker and tanner, originally from Yorkshire, who exported shoes from Guilford to the West Indies. In 1735, Thomas Burgis, Jr. married Hannah Dodd. Their son, Thomas III, graduated from Yale in 1758 and for a time was schoolmaster in North Guilford. He married Olive Dudley in 1769 and lived in the house for many years. It remained in the Burgis family until 1844. The house acquired its saltbox form around 1800, when a rear lean-to was added. The house also has a later Federal-style doorway. Restoration of the house began in 1956, when it was purchased by Helen Pigott. Additional work has been done by its present owners.
You must be logged in to post a comment.