The Enos S. Kimberly House is a very solid and imposing Queen Anne house, built in 1884 on Orange Street in New Haven. Enos Kimberly was, according to an 1886 bill, a dealer in wholesale and retail coal and wood. His wife, Sarah Chatfield Kimberly, was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution. The architect of the home was Rufus G. Russell, a former assistant of Henry Austin.
Lee Academy was built as a schoolhouse in 1821, at the corner of the Boston Post Road and Neck Road in Madison. It was named for Captain Frederick Lee, who had led the effort to establish a private college preparatory school in town, and the new building was constructed across the street from his own house. Capt. Lee had also been the one to propose Madison as a name for the new town in 1826. Although built with a proviso that it would never be moved, the school building has been relocated several times: in 1836 to the western end of the town Green; in 1839 (when it began to serve as a district school, continuing to accommodate the preparatory school as well until 1884) to a plot across from the Green’s northeast corner; in 1896 (making way for the construction of Memorial Hall) to a location behind the Hand Academy. In 1923, the Madison Historical Society began to manage the building, which was moved, for the last time, to its present location, facing west toward the Green. Having housed a number of organizations and businesses over the years, Lee Academy is now used as a museum and as offices for the Historical Society.
Built around 1785, the Humphrey Pratt Tavern in Old Saybrook was a stage stop between New York and Boston and housed Saybrook’s first post office. There is also an attached ell containing a ballroom. The Marquis de Lafayette stayed at the Tavern in 1824. Humphrey Pratt, who also built a house in 1785 for Saybrook’s minister, Frederick William Hotchkiss, was a brother of Deacon Timothy Pratt, whose house stands nearby, and the Tavern remained in the family until 1943. The building also had an adjacent general store, built in 1790, which was later moved down the street and is now the James Pharmacy and Soda Fountain.
Charles Uriah Hayden was the grandson of Ebeneezer Hayden, the leading shipbuilder of his time in Essex. Ebeneezer had been predeceased by his children, so when he died in 1818, he left his property to his grandchildren. They proceeded to construct several impressive homes along West Street and Champlin Square in Essex. Charles Uriah Hayden’s Federal style home was built in 1819, on West Street across from Essex town hall. Within fifteen years, he had lost his money and had to sell the house to Joseph Post, a sea captain and ship builder. Post was likely the owner who added a cupola to the house. After six years, Capt. Post sold the house to his brother in 1841. The house had other owners over the years, including the Brooklyn, New York businessman George Ives Stevens. The house was seriously damaged by a fire in 1994, but it has since been restored.
Located in Newington Junction, the Stoddard-Sherwood House was built for John Rozwell Stoddard. He was superintendent for the Russell & Irwin Manufacturing Company and then manager for the Capewell Horseshoe Nail Company. Stoddard and his wife, Lila Marguerite Steele, had seven children and one of them, Lila Steele Stoddard Sherwood, who had married Charles Sherwood, lived in the house after her father’s death in 1936.
On Church Street in the Pine Meadow section of New Hartford is a very impressive Italianate mansion, built in 1867 by William Bushnell as a wedding gift to his daughter Amelia, who in 1866 had married Philip E. Chapin. Philip’s father, Hermon Chapin, gave the land on which the house was built as a gift to his son. Hermon Chapin also donated land for the construction of St. John’s Episcopal Church, located adjacent to his son’s house. Hermon Chapin was a toolmaker who established the Union Factory in Pine Meadow. Philip Chapin and his brothers later established the Chapin Machine Company in 1870. After Amelia died in 1878, Chapin left New Hartford for Ohio, later remarrying and becoming the general manager of the Cambria Iron Company in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. The house in New Hartford was rented to various people and then, between 1887 and 1922, it was owned by Hubert P. Richards, who used it on weekends. After Richards died, his grandsons, Ralph and Howell owned the house and rented it out. Howell Richards eventually bought his brother’s interest in the Chapin House and owned it until his death in 1974. The house was recently on sale.
Congregational worship services in what is now the town of Darien were originally conducted in private homes starting in 1668. One such home was the Bates-Scofield House, now owned by the Darien Historical Society. At that time the community was still under the authority of the First Church in Stamford, but meetings for worship independent of Stamford began to be held in the 1730s. The Middlesex Ecclesiastical Society was officially organized in 1744, with its first minister, Moses Mather, who would remain in the pulpit for sixty-four years. The first meetinghouse was built in 1740 on the King’s Highway. Rev. Mather was a patriot during the Revolutionary War and, as described in Lossing’s Pictorial Field-Book of the Revolution (1859), “On Sunday, the 22d of July [1781], the church was surrounded by a party of Tories, under Captain Frost, just as the congregation were singing the first tune. Dr. Mather and the men of the congregation were taken to the banks of the Sound, thrust into boats, and conveyed across to Lloyd’s Neck, on Long Island, whence they were carried to New York and placed in the Provost Jail. Some died there.” Rev. Mather and most of the prisoners were eventually released. Middlesex Parish, established in 1737, remained a part of the Town of Stamford until Darien became a separate town in 1820. A new and larger brick meetinghouse, was built adjacent to the original 1837 and a bell was installed in 1841. Additional church history can be read in a pdf file on the church website.
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