The Nathaniel Johnson House is a large saltbox house with a later Greek Revival doorway. Built in 1730, it is located at 58 Fair Street in Guilford. The leading Episcopalian in town, Johnson helped to establish Christ Church in Guilford. He was the brother of Samuel Johnson, an Anglican clergyman and the first president of King’s College (later Columbia) in New York.
At 38 North Elm Street in Wallingford is the Porter Cook House. As recorded in Porter Cook‘s diary (and quoted in the WPA report on the house):
In 1789, Octrober 3, Saturday my new house on Lower Town St. was raised. Samuel Doolittle of Pond Hill hued and fraimed the house, and Timothy Carrington and his son Lemuel clapboarded and shinggled the house. Col. Isaac Cook dighed the sellar wall, Zebilon Potter of this town near Tyler Cook’s East, North of this Town, made the brick. Trobridge and Jordan of New Haven put up my chimney, topt it of in eight days. (Up to Oct. 29, 1790, Bill Brout in and settled $17.00) Captain John Mansfield of Wallingford did the inside work, with them and Abel Mansfield, son to John Mansfield.
A farmer, Cook donated land for Union Academy in Wallingford in 1812.
Built around 1876, the Benjamin Lord House is a Stick Style/Queen Anne residence at 154 Pearl Street in Thompsonville, Enfield. Benjamin F. Lord was the proprietor of the Thompsonville Hotel, which was torn down in 1975. In recent years, the house was a bed and breakfast.
Born in Plymouth in 1826, George Langdon graduated from Yale in 1848. After experiencing a financial reverse as an industrial entrepreneur in Colchester after the Panic of 1857, he returned to Plymouth, where he owned a farm. He became the wealthiest man in town. He served as state representative in 1859 and as first selectman from 1859 to 1865. His Gothic Revival house was built at 688 Main Street in Plymouth circa 1865.
On the property that is now 778 Farmington Avenue in Farmington, Elijah Lewis is said to have had a store going back to 1780. In 1841, the property (which was then part of the Lewis Place, later the Elm Tree Inn) was sold to wheelwright Daniel Buck by Eunice J. Woodruff, daughter of Noadiah Woodruff (son of Judah Woodruff). Buck used it as his home and workshop/store. It has had many owners over the years, including Alfred A. Pope, who purchased it in 1900. By that time it was being used as a plumbing shop and Pope purchased it for Arthur Joseph Parker, a plumber whom he had hired to install the plumbing and heating in his new house, Hill-Stead.
The Turnverein was a German gymnastic/athletics movement. German immigrants to America founded Turnvereine in many communities, including the Rockville Turnverein, which was established in 1857. Members of the club (called Turners) built a Turn Halle on Village Street (a street that had strong associations with the German community) in Rockville in 1897. The building, which has been much altered, was later used by the Polish American Citizens Club.
In 1838, members of the Plymouth Congregational Church who wanted to have a church that was closer to the industrial area of Terryville formed the new Terryville Congregational Church. Clock maker Eli Terry, Sr. was a member and he donated the clock which he manufactured for the front facade of the church. The church was destroyed by fire in 1967 and the current Terryville Congregational Church, rebuilt on the same location (233 Main Street), was dedicated on October 18, 1970. (more…)
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