Samuel M. Darby built the house at 57 Maple Street in Ellington in 1842. In 1861, he sold the property to John H. Throk, who sold it to Edward W. Barber in 1869. It remained in the Barber family, passing from Edward to his widow, and then to his daughter Fannie Barber.
Congregation Adath Israel was organized in 1902. A two-story building in Portland was purchased in 1908 and converted into a synagogue. The current synagogue, at 48 Church Street in Middletown, was built in 1929. In the 1940s, the congregation changed from its original Orthodoxy when the Charter was changed to Conservative.
(Update: above is a new picture of the house taken on July 10, 2014). The Timothy Higgins House in Plantsville in Southington is a Greek Revival residence built in 1828. Deacon Timothy Higgins (1800-1887) was born in Wolcott. He came to Southington and started a tannery on Prospect Street, on Eight Mile River. According to Chapter Sketches: Connecticut Daughters of the American Revolution; Patriots’ Daughters (1904):
Jennette Carter was born in Southington September 5, 1803, the third child in a family of five. She was married to Timothy Higgins November 4, 1824, and became the mother of eleven children, only three of whom are now living. Nearly ten years after their marriage, Mr. and Mrs. Higgins became members of the Congregational Church in Southington. Forty years later their church membership in Southington was transferred to the church in Plantsville.
Edward Twichell, the father of Rev. Joseph Twichell, the friend of Mark Twain, was Higgins’ apprentice and later business partner. (more…)
The house at 49 Barnes Hill Road in Burlington is currently for sale. One of the present owners of the house has provided me the results of some of her research into the history of the property. She writes that
The property was purchased/settled we believe in 1803 (previous owners found a dated cornerstone in the cellar) when Burlington was a part of Bristol (Burlington was incorporated in 1806). The original owners were Amzi [Barnes (1784-1865)] and Sophoronia [Mills] Barnes. We think they built the original structure. They had 10 children, many of whom stayed in the area. Many also died in childhood and are buried in a local Burlington cemetery.
The house has clearly been expanded over time and has been thoroughly renovated for modern living inside. The current main structure we believe dates back to the 1880s and shows up on the Burlington land records then. Our current family room originally served as the “birthing barn” for the new calves on the farm and was later finished as a family room and connected to the main house in the 20th century via a connecting “mud room”.
One of Amzi and Sophronia‘s sons was Isaac Barnes (1830-1909), a meat merchant and lumber dealer who was a member of Connecticut state house of representatives from Burlington in 1867. Another son was Cromwell Barnes, who was the father of Adna North Barnes. Adna had five children with his second wife, Anna Delight Upson Barnes, who are pictured on page 81 of the Images of America volume on Burlington. One of the children was Louis Barnes.
One descendant who lived in the home, Louis Barnes, [was] born during the 1888 blizzard. He was noted as a prize cattle breeder in CT. I believe he is credited with bringing some of the first Swiss cows to America.
In 1760, the parish of North Bolton (which became the Town of Vernon in 1808) was established, formed from the north part of Bolton and the east part of Windsor’s Second Ecclesiastical Society. The first meeting house of the parish was built in 1762 on what is now Sunnyview Drive. A new building was erected on the Hartford Turnpike in 1826 and was dedicated in 1827. In 1851, the church was moved back several feet. A steeple and columns were also added to the church at that time. In 1896 the church’s spire, which had decayed, was taken down. The spire was eventually replaced, but the Hurricane of 1938 blew down the steeple and damaged the church’s roof, necessitating that the spire again be restored in 1939. The entire building was destroyed by a fire on January 23, 1965. Services were held in the Vernon Elementary School while a new church was built, which opened on September 25, 1966. The new building of the First Congregational Church of Vernon was designed to be as much like the previous Greek Revival church as possible.
At 140 Ellsworth Street in the Black Rock section of Bridgeport is a house built in 1836 for Captain John Brittin, who owned a shipyard). The house was remodeled around 1890, when its original full Greek Revival pediment was removed. The house’s original kitchen wing was later removed and is now a separate residence at 33 Hackley Street.
Lemuel Camp built his house on Main Street in Durham in 1806 and it was soon opened as a tavern. Lemuel Camp died in 1843 and his widow, Martha Pickett Camp, in 1860. The house was then divided between their surviving children, Edward Pickett Camp of New Haven and his unmarried sister, Sophronia Camp, but neither lived in the house. Sallie B. Strong bought the property near the turn of the century and rented rooms to tenants. Edward P. Camp’s daughter, Hattie Camp, married the watercolor painter Wedworth Wadsworth (1846-1927) and they rented rented the house as a summer residence. The house has passed through other owners over the years and was restored in 1978.
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