Holy Trinity Roman Catholic Church, Hartford (1928)

In 1896, Father Joseph Zebris of St. Andrew Church, New Britain organized the Sons of Lithuania Society in Hartford, offering Mass for the city’s Lithuanian immigrants in a rented room on Sheldon Street. 1900, when the mission filed a report with the diocese of Hartford, is officially regarded as the inaugural year of Holy Trinity Catholic Church. In 1903, the church purchased property on Capitol Avenue which included a two-story brick building which was converted into a place of worship. This brick dwelling was moved to the back of the lot in 1913 to make room for construction of a new church. The cornerstone was blessed on October 10, 1915 and a basement chapel was ready for use by Christmas of that year. The remainder of the church was completed in 1927 and was dedicated on March 18, 1928. (more…)

Major Thomas Attwater Barnes House (1885)

The house at 463 Orange Street in New Haven was built in 1884-1885 for Major Thomas Attwater Barnes, who ran a grocery business. According to vol. II of A Modern History of New Haven and Eastern New Haven County (1918), Thomas Attwater Barnes‘s father, Amos Foote Barnes,

came to New Haven from Watertown, Connecticut, in 1836 and in 1842 began his independent business career as a grocer, the outgrowth of which was the wholesale grocery business conducted for many years under the name of Fintch & Barnes and one of the well and favorably known business houses of the city. He married Nancy Richards Attwater, daughter of Thomas Attwater, and a descendant of David Attwater, one of the first settlers of New Haven.

Thomas Attwater Barnes, son of Amos F., was born in New Haven in 1848 and in 1869 became a partner of his father, when the firm name was established as Amos F. Barnes & Son and so continued until the partnership was terminated by the death of the senior member in 1890. Thomas Barnes stood in the first rank of New Haven’s substantial and valued citizens, becoming closely identified with a number of the city’s large business interests and actively interested in its public affairs. He served as president of the chamber of commerce; secretary of the State Board of Trade; president of the Union & New Haven Trust Company, which he organized; vice president and a director of the First National Bank, of which his father was an organizer; a trustee of the Connecticut Savings Bank, and director in a number of other corporations in New Haven and elsewhere. He was a member of the New Haven Grays, a famous organization in the city’s history, known as Company F, Second Regiment of the National Guard of Connecticut, joining as a private and advancing to the rank of major in the regiment. He died in 1902. Major Barnes was married in 1873 to Phoebe Bryan Phipps, daughter of Frank Goffe Phipps, of New Haven. Mrs. Barnes passed away in 1903, the mother of two children, Amos Foote and Frank Goffe Phipps, the elder also a resident of New Haven.

Biographical descriptions of T. Attwater Barnes can also be found in Taylor’s Souvenir of the Capitol (1897-1898) and in Vol. I of the Commemorative Biographical Record of New Haven County, Connecticut (1902).

Strong Farmhouse (1878)

Five generations of the Strong family have operated Strong Farm in Vernon, one of the last farms to continue in the suburban town. The farm was established by Nathan Morgan Strong, who built the farmhouse at 274 West Street (at the corner of Peterson Road) in 1878. Originally a dairy farm, after 1965 Strong Farm switched to turkeys, pumpkins, and other crops. Norman Strong, who died in 2010 at the age of 93, was known as the “turkey man” of Vernon. He was happy to show local school children the working of the farm, a tradition continued by the Strong family today, who are working to transform the farm into a non-profit historical agricultural education center. In September, the house sustained damage when a car crashed into it.