The house of Dr. Ezra Mather, on Main Street in Essex, was built soon after 1815. Dr. Mather‘s father, Elisha Mather, was a physician in Centerbrook and Ezra’s brother, Dr. Ulysses Mather, continued to live there. The house remained in the Mather family into the 1950s.
In the nineteenth century, East Haddam‘s Upper Landing was home to a fashionable hotel known as the Champion House. The original brick hotel was built in 1782 for Samuel Phillips Lord and it was later purchased by Noah Buckley. The Federal-style building was later Victorianized and enlarged in 1839, 1858, and 1880. Today, it is the Champion House Apartments.
In the 1920s, this 1917 Colonial Revival house on Prospect Avenue in Hartford, was occupied by Alfred C. Fuller, founder of the the Fuller Brush Company. Originally from Nova Scotia, Alfred Carl Fuller, the original “Fuller Brush Man,” emphasized door-to-door selling—Fuller‘s memoir was titled, A Foot in the Door. The symmetrical house, which interestingly has non-symmetrical chimneys, was designed by William T. Marchant of Hartford.
The Amasa Day House in Moodus (in East Haddam) was built in 1816 by Colonel Julius Chapman, who farmed on the property. After his death, in 1842, the property was sold at auction and purchased by Amasa Day. In the following years, Day, who was an insurance agent and banker, sold off parts of the land. The house was inherited by his daughter, Katherine and her husband, Eugene Chaffee, who worked for the New York Net and Twine Company, one of several twine factories in Moodus. Their son was Dr. Amasa Day Chaffee, a well-known art photographer. The house was donated to Connecticut Landmarks in 1967 and is now a museum.
Since 1739, Baptists in Meriden had attended services in Wallingford. A seperate society in Meriden was founded in 1786 and in 1801 a dwelling house was purchased near the Meriden-Wallingford border to be used for worship by the societies of both towns. In 1815, the Meriden Baptists erected their own meeting house, near the later location of their parsonage, which was also open for the Methodists to use. This building was moved across the street and enlarged in 1831. By 1846, the Baptists required a new building but found the Congregationalists unwilling to sell the church they were planning to vacate on Broad Street (as it turned out, a group of Congregationalists continued to use the church, which is now called Center Congregational Church). Instead, the Baptists purchased the vacant lot adjoining the Congregational church and built the current First Baptist Church in 1847-1848.
In building their church next to the Congregational church, the Baptists encountered resistance from “Standing Order.” According to An Historic Record and Pictorial Description of the Town of Meriden (1907), “The work of building the new church met with a remonstrance from the neighboring church who caused an injunction to be placed on the progress of the work, the reason given for the same when the question was decided in court was as follows: “No objection to the Baptists as Christian people, as good neighbors and worthy citizens,” but Rev. Mr. Miller had a peculiarly sharp, ringing voice, that the Congregationalists claimed would disturb their society in worship. As may be readily supposed the injunction was removed and the present house of worship erected.”
The Moses Andrews Homestead, on West Main Street in Meriden, was built around 1760 by Sgt. Moses Andrews‘s father, Samuel Andrews III. Moses was a Tory and during the Revolutionary War, the house was used as the first Episcopal place of worship in Meriden, with Andrews later acting as Lay Reader. The house remained in the family until 1864 and was then used for various purposes over the years, including as a school. In 1933, the house was restored, as a W.P.A project, to become a school and museum. When the school board ceased to use the property, it again became a museum organized by the Andrews Homestead Committee (formed in 1940). The house was again restored in 1954 and is now operated by the Meriden Historical Society as a museum. (more…)
The history of the Episcopal Church in Meriden goes back to 1775, when a group loyal to the Church of England met secretly to worship at the Moses Andrews Homestead on West Main Street. St Andrew’s Parish was officially established in 1789 and the first church building, made of wood, was constructed in 1810 at the location of the burying ground. The second church was built in 1848 on Broad Street and later became the first church building used by St. Rose of Lima Church. The cornerstone of the present St. Andrew’s Church, at the intersection of Catlin, Liberty and East Main Streets, was laid in 1866. The church, consecrated the following year, was constructed of Portland brownstone and was designed by Henry Dudley of New York, an English-born architect known for his Gothic Revival churches.
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