Charles Bell House (1883)

Charles H. Bell was a merchant in Portland who continued the business started by his father, Edwin Bell. In 1867, the elder Bell had purchased Samuel Hall’s store on Main Street and Charles Bell would vastly enlarge the building, adding a third floor to the original two-stories. The style of the new third floor resembled the Queen Anne with stick elements of Bell’s own house, built on Main Street in 1883, which perhaps utilized the same materials. Bell’s store sold groceries, flour, hay, grain, seeds and light agricultural implements. Bell also partnered with John Anderson in a firm to manufacture a new kind of lead pipe coupling, patented by Anderson in 1895. (see Portland in 1896 pdf file, p.6)

Crescent Street Row Houses, Middletown (1867)

Urban-style row houses are not so common in Connecticut, but a notable example can be found at 71-83 Crescent Street in Middletown. These Mansard-roofed houses were built in 1866-1867 by Julius Hotchkiss, an entrepreneur and politician, who had been mayor of Waterbury and began serving in the United States House of Representatives the year the original houses were completed. The house at #71 was built in 1895 by his daughter, M. Amelia Vinal, who had married the lawyer, Charles Green Rich Vinal.

Walter Brewster House (1787)

Located on Library Road off Canterbury Green is the small center-chimney home built by Walter Brewster around 1787. Brewster was a clock-maker and a silversmith and goldsmith. In 1792, Brewster joined with other Connecticut artisans (including much more well-to-do ones, like the manufacturer Christopher Leffingwell of Norwich) in a huge petition drive protesting the state’s taxation system and the ruling gentry. In 1797, Walter Brewster sold his house to his brother, Abel Brewster, also a goldsmith, silversmith and pewterer who, according to A Modern History of New London County (1922),

“had a goldsmith shop on the meeting house green in Canterbury, Connecticut, where his brother, Walter Brewster, also lived. In the “Courier,” published at Norwich, April 3, 1799, J. Huntington & Co. advertise among other things, “Table and Tea Spoons made to any pattern by Abel Brewster of Canterbury, may be had of Huntington & Co., also orders for any kind of Goldsmith and Jewellry Articles left with them will be executed by said Brewster with neatness and dispatch. Norwich Port, March 26. 1799”

In November, 1804, he seems to have set up his shop in Norwich Landing, and advertises that he is now selling for the most reasonable prices in cash or approved notes, a variety of warranted middling and low prized watches, chains, seals, keys, warranted silver table, tea, salt and mustard spoons; sugar tongs, silver thimbles, a variety of fashionable gold ear rings, knobs, lockets, bosom pins, and finger rings; warranted gold necklaces of superior quality; ladies’ and gentlemen’s morocco pocket books; pen knives, most kinds of watch materials and a variety of other articles in his line. “N.B. All kinds of Watches repaired with the utmost punctuality and dispatch. Cash and the highest price given for old gold and silver.” On February 27, 1805, he advertises, “A SUCCESSOR WANTED—ABEL BREWSTER. Finding the care necessary in his business too great for the present state of his health, offers to dispose of his whole stock in Business, consisting of Watches, Furnishing Materials, Jewelry, Silver and Fancy Work, Tools, &c, &c. He thinks the call highly worthy the attention of some Gentleman of the profession. Also for sale, the house, shop and garden formerly occupied by him and beautifully situated on Canterbury Green.” In “The Courier” of April 3, 1805, he announces that “Having disposed of his business to Messrs Judah Hart and Alvin Wilcox, he requests all persons indebted to him (whose debts have become due) to make immediate payment without further notice.” He died in 1807, and the inventory of his estate included a small house and lot “in Swallowall” (now Franklin Square) in Norwich.

The day of the old-time gold or silversmith had nearly passed; much of the work was now done by machinery, and while spoons still continued to be occasionally made, yet seldom has a good specimen been found in this section of later-day work.”

Lathrop Manor (1745)

The seventeenth century home of Dr. John Olmstead, Norwich’s first physician, was located at the current site of Lathrop Manor, on Washington Street in Norwichtown. He later sold his house, built around 1660, to Samuel Lathrop (1650-1732). It was then inherited by Samuel’s son, Thomas Lathrop (1681-1774). It is possible the original house burned in 1745 and was rebuilt. In any case, after Samuel’s death, it was owned by Dr. Daniel Lathrop, who joined with Dr. Joshua Lathrop (whose home is across the street) to establish Connecticut’s first apothecary, at that time the only one located between New York and Boston. Benedict Arnold lived in the house as a young man while he was apprenticed to the Lathrops, who were merchants in addition to running an apothecary. Dr. Daniel Lathrop married Jerusha, the daughter of Governor Joseph Talcott. The property was famed for its gardens and Lydia Huntly Sigourney, who later became a popular poet and author, lived in the house as a child while her father was working as a gardener for the Lathrops. Sigourney recorded her memories of the house and garden in her books, Sketch of Connecticut, Forty Years Since (1824) and Letters of Life (1866). After Mrs. Jerusha Lathrop died in 1806, the house was owned by another Daniel Lathrop, the son of Dr. Joshua Lathrop. An important resident in the later nineteenth century was Daniel Coit Gilman, an influential educator who taught at Yale and became the first president of Johns Hopkins University. A Lathrop descendant, Gilman delivered A Historical Discourse at Norwich’s Bicentennial Celebration in 1859. Today the house is a bed & breakfast called Lathop Manor.

C.L. Griswold Factory (1870)

According to the History of Middlesex County, Connecticut (1884), the Town of Chester

“is finely situated for manufacturing, having two considerable streams of water running through it, which have their rise in the lower part of Haddam and unite, at tide-water, at the head of the cove. […] The first factory on the south stream is the bitt factory of C. L. Griswold, now occupied by the Chester Manufacturing Company, consisting of Edwin G. Smith, John H. Bailey, and Charles E. Wright, who manufacture auger bitts, corkscrews, reamers, etc. The factory is on the site of a forge built about the year 1816, and occupied by Abel Snow in the forging of ship anchors. About 1838, the building was used for the manufacture of carriage springs, later by C. L. Griswold & Co. for the manufacture of bitts, and by the present owners for the same business.”

The C.L. Griswold Factory building, built around 1870 (or perhaps as early as 1850) continued to be used for manufacturing until 1919. In the 1920s, the building became a Masonic Lodge and was more recently used by the National Theatre of the Deaf. In 2001 the building was purchased by the Chester Historical Society and has been renovated to become the Chester Museum at the Mill.

Seymour Congregational Church (1847)

The first Ecclesiastical Society in what is now Seymour was formed in 1789, when the area was still a part of Derby and known as Chusetown (and later as Humphreysville). The first meeting house was built in 1791 on on Pearl Street, where there is now a Methodist Church. The second meeting house was completed in 1825 where the Old Congregational Cemetery is today. It was known as the Village Church and then the Humphreysville Church. The third and current church was built in 1846-1847 and enlarged, with an addition on the south end, in 1890, when the church was also incorporated as the Seymour Congregational Church. The Albert Swan Memorial parish house was built adjacent to the church in 1907. The church buildings had to be extensively restored after the Flood of 1955.