Caleb Baldwin Tavern (1763)

Happy Fourth of July! During the Revolutionary War, the French General Rochambeau’s army passed twice through Newtown: first in June, 1781, during the march to the Battle of Yorktown, and again in October, 1782, during the return march. On June 23, 1781, Claude Blanchard, the French commissary officer, arrived five days before the army to make arrangements for supplying the French camps. As Blanchard related in his diary (translated by William Duane, edited by Thomas Balch and published in 1876):

Newtown is on a hill surrounded by hills which are still higher. There are only a hundred houses with two temples [churches]. One of them was near the place where I lodged; and, as it was Sunday, I saw many people from the vicinity dismount there. As all the inhabitants of the country are proprietors and, consequently, in pretty easy circumstances, they had come on horseback, as well as their wives and daughters. In the neighborhood of Boston, they come in carriages; but here the country is mountainous and the horse is more suitable. The husband mounts his horse along with his wife; sometimes there are two women or two young girls together; they are all well clothed, wearing the little black hat in the English style, and making as good an appearance as the burghers in our cities. I counted more than a hundred horses at the door of the temple, where I heard singing before the preaching, in chorus or in parts. The singing was agreeable and well performed, not by hired priests and chaplains, but by men or women, young men or young girls whom the desire of praising God had assembled.

To-day I was rejoined at Newtown, where I spent the whole day, by M. de Sançcon, my secretary and some surgeons and apothecaries. I pointed out to them the site which I had selected for the hospital, and set out, on the 25th, to proceed to the American army.

Blanchard stayed in Newtown at the Caleb Baldwin Tavern, which had been built about 1763. Caleb Baldwin was a schoolmaster, postmaster and town clerk in Newtown. The tavern is where local farmers would drink sassafras beer after the sheep grazed in Ram Pasture. According to Newtown’s History and Historian, Ezra Levan Johnson (1917):

Caleb Baldwin’s Inn had the reputation of being the pattern of neatness, homelike in all surroundings and it was also claimed that there could be had the best broiled chicken or sirloin steak to be found in Fairfield county. The motherly reputation of the hostess made it a much sought place for restfulness.

The building remained in the Baldwin family until 1917. Still standing at 32 Main Street in Newtown, the former tavern was later remodeled twice, in the Federal and Victorian eras.

East Granby Congregational Church (1830)

As related by Albert Carlos Bates, in the introduction to his Records of the Congregational Church in Turkey Hills: now the Town of East Granby, Connecticut, 1776-1858 (1907):

The Congregational Church in Turkey Hills, now the town of East Granby, Connecticut, is said by tradition to have been organized in 1737, the year in which the society or parish in which it is located held its first meeting. The General Assembly in October of the previous year had passed an act which divided the town of Simsbury into four ecclesiastical societies, the section previously called the “northeast corner” being established as Turkey Hills. The same year another act of the Assembly enlarged the limits of the society, by adding to it on the east a section of the town of Windsor, having a length of about four miles and known from its width as “the half mile”. In 1786, by division of the town of Simsbury, the section of Turkey Hills which had been in that town became a part of the town of Granby; and in 1854, by the same method, the section which had been in Windsor became a part of the town of Windsor Locks. On June 2, 1858, the town of East Granby was incorporated [from portions of Granby and Windsor Locks] with practically the same boundaries as the society of Turkey Hills.

The Society’s first meetinghouse was completed in 1744. The current East Granby Congregational Church is a masonry building of ashlar granite, built in 1830 by Connecticut Valley master builder, Isaac Damon, of Northampton, Massachusetts.

Dibbell House (1848)

At 170 East Main Street in Clinton is a brick Greek Revival house, built around 1848. The earliest surviving deed to the house dates to October 1850, when it was transferred from Samuel R. Dibbell to Charles Dibbell. The plot where the Dibbell House sits, at the corner of Boston Post Road and Old Clinton Road (Route 145), is known as Dibbell’s Corner and the house is still in the Dibbell family. The house has a full, two-story Greek portico with freestanding Ionic columns, which were originally made by hand in a barn then on the property. The house’s corner location makes it vulnerable to damage from vehicle crashes. Twenty years ago, a motorcycle crash which killed the driver destroyed the two left columns. Preservationist Jeffrey Bradley crafted exact replacements. Last year, another crash just missed the right column and damaged brickwork on the house. The column survived, but rot was discovered. Bradley’s services were again called upon to repair the damaged column.

Eclectic Society (1907)

The Eclectic Society was established as a fraternity at Wesleyan University in Middletown in 1837, later adopting the Greek letters Phi Nu Theta. The Society‘s first permanent house, which did not have residential accommodations, was built 1882. In 1906, the Society hired architect Henry Bacon to design a Doric Greek revival structure at 200 High Street. Bacon had previously worked for the architectural firm of McKim, Mead and White and would go on to design the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC and to make preliminary sketches for Wesleyan’s Olin library. Completed in 1907, the Eclectic building is seen as a precursor to the Lincoln Memorial, both having a Doric design but lacking the typical accompanying pediment. In 1970, there was a split between undergraduate and alumni members: ties were severed and the alumni organization, the Socratic Literary Society, incorporated a century before, was dissolved. The undergraduates abandoned the use of Greek letters, elected women to membership and sold the house to the University.

Viets’ Tavern (1760)

Viets’ Tavern is an eighteenth century building, which was much added to over the years. It is located just across the street from Old Newgate Prison in East Granby and served as an inn and tavern. According to Francis Hubbard Viets, in A Genealogy of the Viets Family (1902), Captain John Viets (1712-1777),

worked for a time with his brother Henry in the Simsbury copper mines at Newgate. It is said that while working in the mines at Newgate he met Lois Phelps, an unusually charming girl, who had come with others to visit the caverns, which, then as now, were objects of curiosity. Lois afterwards became his wife. […] He settled on an estate near Newgate and became a farmer, store and hotel keeper, and an extensive trader. His homestead is now in possession of his descendant, Virgil E. Viets. The present house, however, or the greater part of it, was built at a later day. Tradition gives John Viets the credit of introducing potato culture into this part of Connecticut; he is said to have brought the seed from Rhode Island in his saddlebags. […]
He was first a lieutenant and afterwards captain of militia. […] In 1773 Captain John Viets was appointed master or keeper of Newgate prison for the ensuing year. In 1775 he was again appointed keeper of Newgate during the pleasure of the Assembly; he was paid this year for his services as keeper £149, 17s, 8½d.

As further related by Richard H. Phelps in Newgate of Connecticut: its Origins and Early History (1876):

Lieutenant Viet’s tavern, a few rods from the prison, was an especial accommodation, not only for travellers, but for the better sort of convicts. He who could muster the needful change, would prevail on some one of the guard to escort him over the way to the inn of the merry old gentleman, where his necessities and those of his escort were amply supplied at the bar.

John’s son, Luke Viets, was tavern-keeper through 1834. The tavern sign from his time displayed the date 1790. More recent estimates give a date for the Tavern of c. 1760. The unrestored tavern is now part of the state’s Old New-Gate Prison and Copper Mine site and museum.

Edmund J. Thompson, Jr. House (1800)

Built around 1800, the Edmund J. Thompson, Jr. House is at 99 South Main Street in East Granby. The house has a finely-detailed Palladian window over the entrance and a later colonnaded Greek Revival portico on the south side, added around 1840. During the Revolutionary War, Edmund (or Edward) J. Thompson, Jr. served in the Connecticut Continental Line from 1779 to 1780. He later left East Granby and settled in Lowville, New York.