John Humphreys was a brother of General David Humphreys. Their father, Rev. Daniel Humphreys, built John a home on Elm Street in what is now Ansonia. The house was acquired by James Stokes, who lived next door, around 1854. Stokes piped water to his own home and barn from a spring on the Humphreys property. The house is not to be confused with the John Humphreys House in Swampscott, MA.
One of the four historic properties owned by the Salmon Brook Historical Society is the Weed-Enders House. The house was originally constructed in 1790, six miles to the west of its present location, by Moses Weed. It was then owned by members of the Weed family and then other families, until it was acquired in 1924 by John Enders, who used it as a hunting lodge. In 1974, after the Enders State Forest was established, the house was moved to be adjacent to the Abijah Rowe House. It is now part of the Samon Brook Historical Society’s museum.
The oldest house in Wallingford is the Nehemiah Royce House on North Main Street. Nehemiah Royce (who died in 1706) and his first wife Hannah, were among the first settlers of Wallingford. Royce‘s saltbox house was built in 1672. The house is also known as the Washington Elm House because it used to be next to the Washington Elm: in 1775, when George Washington was on his way to take command of the Continental Army in Massachusetts, he stopped in Wallingford to purchase gunpowder and addressed the people of the town in front of the house near the Elm. The house was moved to its present location in 1924. For a time it was a museum and then was used as a residence by Choate Rosemary Hall, until donated to the Wallingford Historic Preservation Trust in the 1990s.
The Franklin and Harriet Johnson Mansion, on South Main Street in Wallingford, was built in 1866. By the late twentieth century, it was being used for offices and had lost most of its nineteenth century Italianate decorative features. In 1999, the Johnson Mansion was donated to the Wallingford Historic Preservation Trust to become the new home for the now closed Meriden American Silver Museum. Both Meriden and Wallingford were centers for silver manufacturing. The house is now being restored.
Jeremiah Hollister built a saltbox house on the west side of Main Street in South Glastonbury in 1736. In 1739, he sold the house to Joseph Tryon. An addition to the house (since removed) served as a Post Office in the nineteenth century. A porch, added in the early twentieth century, was also removed when the house was remodeled in 1976. Since then, the house, which is adjacent to a strip mall, has been used for businesses. (more…)
Rev. Levi Smith of New Milford was the minister of the First Church in South Windsor from 1840 to 1849, the period during which the current church building was constructed. At that time he lived in a house on Old Main Street in East Windsor Hill which is no longer standing. In 1853, he moved into a Greek Revival house down the street which he intended to be his retirement home, but died nine months later (in 1854). Rev. Smith was a supporter of the Theological Seminary, located at that time near his home and later moved to Hartford. He founded two annual scholarships and left his library to the Seminary.
Derby’s Second Congregational Church, located on Derby Green across from Immanuel St. James Episcopal Church, began as the Birmingham Congregational Society, founded by members of the First Church who lived in what is now the center of Derby. The church was built in 1845 and dedicated on January 28, 1846. The top of the steeple was damaged by Hurricane Gloria in 1985 and has not been replaced.
Also, be sure to check out my new Architectural Article about SECOND EMPIRE & QUEEN ANNE HOUSES. Please let me know what you think of it!
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