Benjamin Roberts House (1760)

According to An Architectural History of East Hartford, Connecticut (1989), edited by Doris Darling Sherrow, page 12, the house at 58 Central Avenue in East Hartford was long thought to be a Colonial Revival home built in a neighborhood that was developed in the nineteenth century. A restoration in 1987 revealed it was actually an eighteenth century building, albeit with unusual features for a colonial house in the East Hartford area: it is four bays rather than the usual five and has a double overhang and a side chimney. The house now sits on a brick foundation, typical of the nineteenth century, indicating that it was moved from elsewhere in town to the newly opened Central Avenue. When Edward W. Hayden (1840-1879) acquired the lot where the house now stands from his parents in 1870, period documentation reveals that he had already moved some buildings to the site. Hayden was a Civil War veteran, known for the diary he kept during the conflict. He lived at 1871 Main Street and rented out the house he had moved to Central Avenue. The house is thought to be the Hezekiah Roberts House (built by Hezekiah’s grandfather Benjamin), because Hayden had bought part of the Roberts estate off Main Street. Another house Hayden owned, that stood next to the Roberts House, was the home of his grandfather, Rev. Eliphalet Williams. That house was demolished early in the twentieth century, but its original Connecticut River Valley doorway is now at the Connecticut Historical Society.

The Roberts House began on Main Street with a structure that later became the ell of the later main house. That main house was built circa 1760 and is the one later moved by Hayden to Central Avenue. The Roberts House is described in Joseph O. Goodwin’s East Hartford: Its History and Traditions (1879):

[Benjamin Roberts] lived on the Hezekiah Roberts place. He brought up his family in the rear L of that house, which is very old and has a vast chimney. He afterwards built his main house, with a cellar having unusually solid walls, and a staircase down which hogsheads of rum could be, and probably were, rolled, for some of our citizens were West India traders in those days.

Hotchkiss House (1819)

David Miles Hotchkiss (1787-1878) was an educator, civic leader, and abolitionist in the town of Prospect. In 1819-1820, his father, Frederick Hotchkiss, had erected a farmhouse for him at 61 Waterbury Road for a total cost of $660.99. David Hotchkiss operated a boarding school, called the Select Academy, on the house’s second floor. A member of the committee that named the town Prospect (for its high elevation) when it was incorporated in 1827 (the town was formed from the neighboring towns of Waterbury and Cheshire), Hotchkiss then served as a town selectman and in the state legislature. An abolitionist, he contributed to the creation of the Free Soil Party in Connecticut in 1848. The house was inherited by his tenth child, David Bryant Hotchkiss (1853-1903). The building was altered and enlarged over the years, with changes that included the replacement of the original large center chimney with a smaller one in the 1870s. At that same time the original front door was removed, but it was reused in the ell attached to the rear of the house. Three of David Bryant’s children, his son Treat (1888-1957) and two daughters, Ruth (1885-1978) and Mabel (1882-1966), never married and lived in the house until their deaths. The siblings left the house and surrounding property, which includes the Hotchkiss Farm, to their nieces, Nellie and Ruth Cowdell, who then sold it to the town of Prospect in 1980. Upon their deaths, the town received a bequest from the sisters towards the maintenance of the house, which is now the headquarters of the Prospect Historical Society.

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James Driggs Shipsmith Shop (1885)

Located at Mystic Seaport, the James Driggs Shipsmith Shop originally stood at the head of Merrill’s (now Homer’s) Wharf in New Bedford, Massachusetts. It was erected in 1885 by James D. Driggs, who had previously operated the most productive blacksmithing business in New Bedford with his partner, Joseph Dean. In 1846 Dean & Driggs had established their shop near Merrill’s Wharf, at what would become known as Driggs Lane, where they produced harpoons and other equipment for whaling ships. Among the journeymen they employed was Lewis Temple, Jr., the son of the man who invented the toggle iron harpoon in the 1840s. In 1885, with the whaling industry waning, Driggs moved to the smaller shop, pictured above, which he built with the help of his grandson.

In 1902, Driggs sold the shop to Ambrose J. Peters, who pursued both whalecraft manufacture and general blacksmithing. After his death in 1918, his brother, Charles E. Peters, continued the business until 1924, selling the building the following year. It was then placed on display at Col. E. H. R. Green‘s estate at Round Hill in South Dartmouth, Massachusetts, where the Charles W. Morgan, the last ship of America’s whaling fleet and now based at Mystic Seaport, was also exhibited. The Driggs shop was also moved to Mystic Seaport in 1944.

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Nathan Seelye House (1775)

The house at 2 Chestnut Street in Bethel was built c. 1775. At some point it was acquired by Nathan Seelye (or Seeley), probably a few years after his marriage to Hannah Hawley in 1790. Born in Fairfield in 1766, Nathan Seelye was a farmer and a hatter whose business in Bethel was located at the corner of Wooster and Main Streets. Earlier, he had been a farmer in the Startfield section of Fairfield. A story about him is related in A History of the Old Town of Stratford and the City of Bridgeport, Connecticut (1886), by Samuel Orcutt:

Nathan Seeley, when a young man, was a constable in Stratfield parish and had a writ to serve for a debt; and the law was at that time, such that the person on whom a writ was served must be touched with the paper to make the arrest legal. He rode a large, powerful horse, and found his man loading his cart with manure with a pitchfork. He told the constable to keep away and kept the fork raised for his defence. Upon this said Nathan put spurs to his horse and made him jump on the man so that he touched him with the writ. After having done that he had the power to call out the militia to make the arrest complete.

The house in Bethel continued to be occupied by his son, Isaac H. Seelye, who also had a hatting business. Isaac’s brother Seth was a merchant whose house is now the Bethel Public Library. Two of his sons became college presidents: Laurenus C. Seelye was president of Smith College from 1873 to 1910 and Julius Hawley Seelye was president of Amherst College from 1876 to 1890.

Philo Bevin House (1872)

The Second Empire-style house at 26 Barton Hill Road in East Hampton was built in 1872 by Philo Bevin, who was born in 1813 in the William Bevin House across the street. Philo was one of four brothers who ran the Bevin Brothers Manufacturing Company, which helped transform East Hampton into Belltown, USA and still manufactures bells today. As related in the Commemorative Biographical Record of Middlesex County, Connecticut (1903)

A man of high moral principles, Mr. Bevin sought to promote every work calculated to advance the mental and moral condition of mankind, as well as to further the material welfare of his town and State. He was closely identified with the work of the local Congregational Church, in which he acted successively as clerk and treasurer. Being a stanch supporter of temperance principles, his life was an ideal one in the line of proper living. Politically he was a Whig in early life, and promptly joined the Republican party upon its organization. At one time he represented his town in the Legislature.

The house remained in the Bevin family until 1971. Alice Conklin Bevin (1893-1969), Philo’s granddaughter, occupied the house in the 1940s. She was a well-known artist who painted murals in the house’s third-floor bathroom and in the property’s barn, which she used as a studio. In 2015, new owner Dean Brown began a major restoration of the house into a bed & breakfast called The Bevin House.

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St. Peter Church, Danbury (1875)

The Catholic parish of St. Peter’s in Danbury was established in 1851 at a time when many Catholic immigrants who were settling in the area. It was the first Catholic parish in northern Fairfield county and parishioners would walk ten miles from surrounding towns to attend Mass. For a few months in 1851 the parish held services in the court house, but soon acquired a former Universalist church building at the corner of Main and Wooster Streets. In the late 1850s, the parish purchased a lot on Main Street that included a former Congregational church, the church building itself being officially purchased in 1860. That church was renovated for Catholic services and used until a new church was completed. As described in James H. O’Donnell’s History of the Diocese of Hartford (1900) [St. Peter’s is now in the Diocese of Bridgeport]:

The Rev. Philip Sheridan followed Dr. [Ambrose] Manahan in 1865. Four years after his arrival he conceived the design of erecting a Gothic stone church which would not only be an architectural ornament to the town, but a temple worthy of the growing importance of the parish. To this end he removed the pastoral residence to the rear of the lot on the southwest corner of Main street, and on its site began the foundations of the new church. The soil here was sandy and humid, and great difficulty was experienced in securing a solid bed for the foundations. In some places the builders were obliged to grout to the depth of twenty-seven feet. The difficulties were overcome, however, but at an expenditure of nearly $4000. The corner-stone was laid on Sunday, August 28, 1870

Work on the church, designed in the Gothic Revival style by the architectural firm of Keely and Murphy, was delayed by the Panic of 1873, but the building, located at 119 Main Street, was dedicated on December 13, 1875.

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