Stiles-Stoddard House (1795)

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The Stiles-Stoddard House in Seymour was built on the site of an earlier home, constructed by the son of a Pequot sachem, named Joseph Mauwehu, who was also known as “Chuse.” Joseph and his followers lived in an area of land known as Indian Hill, which was north of the Naugatuck River near the Great Falls. From around 1740, the Indians lived peacefully with the white settlers who were moving into the area, but eventually the newcomers numbers grew to an extent that made it difficult for the Indians to follow their traditional way of life. After living more than four decades in the area, Joseph then left with his tribesmen and moved to Kent, where their was a larger Indian reservation. Seymour was first known as Chusetown, named in honor of Chief Joseph. In 1795, Nathan Stiles built his house on the site where Joseph had lived, at a fork in the road, where today Pearl Street splits off from South Main Street. After Stiles’ death in 1804, his widow, Phebe Dayton Stiles, lived in the house and owned land on Indian Hill. Over the years, many people sought to buy her land, and to each of them she promised to sell it eventually, but these promises were so often repeated without her selling to anyone, that Indian Hill came to be known as the “Promised Land.” The house was later received by Dr. Thomas Stoddard as a gift from his father. In 1898, when C.H. Lounsbury owned the house, he raised and repaired the building, converting it into a two-family home.

Frank S. Brown House (1880)

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The Queen Anne style house of Frank S. Brown, on Hartford Avenue in Wethersfield, was built sometime in the 1880s. Brown was a Hartford merchant who, in 1866, joined with James M. Thomson and William McWhirter to form the dry goods firm of Brown, Thomson & Co., which became a major New England department store. Brown retired from the company in 1890 and in 1893 the house was sold out of the Brown family. Ellsworth S. Grant, the Connecticut historian, former mayor of West Hartford and brother-in-law of Katharine Hepburn, was later born in the house. In 1920, Minnie Pricone and Mary Rometta, with their husbands and families, moved into the house. They owned the Marie Phillips Dress Company and tailoring work was done in the basement area of the house.

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Rev. Samuel Seabury House (1792)

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On Greene’s Alley in New London is the home of Reverend Samuel Seabury, which was built around 1792. Rev. Seabury was an Episcopal minister and a loyalist during the Revolutionary War, who was selected at a 1783 meeting in the Glebe House in Woodbury to become the first American Episcopal Bishop. Rev. Seabury also lived in an earlier house, built in 1743 (unless it’s the same house?). After his death, in 1796, he was succeeded as rector of St James Church in New London by his son, Rev. Charles Seabury.

First Baptist Church in Essex (1845)

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The Baptist Church in Essex was founded in 1811. The congregation’s first church was a brick building, built in 1817, which stood across Prospect Street from Hill’s Academy. In 1845, a new church was built, adjacent to the Academy on Baptist Hill. Constructed by master builder Jeremish Gladding, the Baptist Church was designed in the Egyptian Revival style, modeled on an 1844 Presbyterian church, the Old Whaler’s Church in Sag Harbor, Long Island, designed by Minard Lafever. Both of these buildings are interesting examples of a style not often used for churches in America. The church’s original steeple was destroyed after being struck by lightning in 1925. It was replaced by the current steeple, a Colonial Revival structure which features a gold dome and a variation on a ‘Widow’s Walk” below.