Wilcox-Meech House (1872)

An Italianate double house at 55 Crescent Street in Middletown, the Wilcox-Meech House was built between 1867 and 1872 (or between 1880 and 1890) by John Wilcox, Middletown’s Chief of Police. George Thomas Meech purchased the property in 1881 and lived there into the 1930s. George T. Meech had served in the Civil War and later was a partner with Orrin E. Stoddard in the Meech & Stoddard grain and feed store. The house was owned by the Hubbard family (and became known as the Hubbard Estate) from 1937 to 1973, when it was acquired by Middlesex Memorial Hospital. It is now used by the hospital as offices.

Parker Homestead (1777)

At 640 Wormwood Hill Road in Mansfield is a house originally built by Capt. Richard Fletcher (1736-1812) and sold, in 1777, to Zachariah Parker, Jr., who farmed on the property. The house would remain in the Parker family until 1901. Zachariah passed it to his eldest son, Thomas Parker, who had five sons and one daughter with his wife, Hannah Atwood Parker. The elder brothers, Miner and Pliny, married, but the three younger brothers did not. Their sister, Hannah Parker (1804-1895), kept house for her brothers at the Parker Homestead, where she lived until her death. Hannah Parker also taught school at Wormwood Hill and professed to be the first female teacher in Mansfield. Her nieces and nephews inherited the house and sold it in 1901 to Gertrude Cantor of New York. She and her sister, Alice Cantor, ran the property as a summer boarding house. To make more room for their many guests, the sisters raised the house from its original one-and-a-half stories to a full two stories. (more…)

St. Anthony Church, Ansonia (1915)

Lithuanians in Ansonia sought to establish an ethnic parish when they incorporated a lodge of the Lithuanian Society of St. Anthony in 1907. Bishop John J. Nilan of the Diocese of Hartford rebuffed their request, insisting that the Lithuanians remain within Assumption parish. The Lithuanians began to build a church in 1912 without episcopal approval, hoping that the bishop would reverse his decision, but he maintained his previous position. In 1915, an appeal directly to Rome succeeded and St. Anthony parish was given sanction by the Pope to operate as an independent parish. St. Anthony’s Church was dedicated on Thanksgiving Day 1915 by Father Matthew Pankus of Bridgeport.

Update: In 2015, the church celebrated its 100th anniversary and then closed.

Oliver Boardman House (1785)

The house at 168 North Street in Litchfield is described in Historic Litchfield, 1721-1907 (1907), by Alice T. Bulkeley, as follows:

Retracing our steps down North street toward the center, the next house of historical interest is the Lord house, built in 1785 by Oliver Boardman on Glebe Land. The east side of North street, from the corner of East street to the Lord house, was owned by the church and called Glebe Land.

The land on which the house was built was either leased by or sold to Boardman by the church authorities, and bought of him by Sylvester Spencer, Litchfield’s former real estate dealer. It was also owned by Samuel Beach, who sold it to George Lord, the brother of Augustus, who with his sister resided there until his death at the age of eighty-seven. His sister, Miss Lord, occupied the home until her death in the Spring of 1907 at the age of 80 years and 11 months, when the house descended to her nieces. The side doorstep, an immense block of stone, was brought from Salisbury, requiring twelve pair of oxen to draw it.