Derby’s Congregational Church was organized in 1677. The first meetinghouse was built in 1681 and the second one in 1721-1722. The current church was built in 1821. Rev. Daniel Humphreys, father of David Humphreys, was minister in Derby for many years.
The H.L. Judd Mansion was built on South Main Street in Wallingford in 1887, but the elaborate Victorian home was demolished in the 1930s. The mansion’s carriage house, however, survived and was moved to the parking lot at the rear of the Wallingford Town Hall property. According to Everett Gleason Hill’s A Modern History of New Haven and Eastern New Haven County (1918), the Judd Manufacturing Company was organized in New Haven in 1870 and:
“In 1877 the business was removed to Wallingford, where they erected a large plant and began the manufacture of stationers’ and druggists’ hardware. The principal stockholders were Morton Judd and his three sons, Albert D., Hubert L. and Edward M., Hubert L. acting as the company’s selling agent in New York. About 1870 a branch factory was established in Brooklyn, New York, for the manufacture of upholsterers’ hardware, which in 1884 was incorporated under the name of H. L. Judd & Company. In 1886 H. L. Judd & Company of Brooklyn bought the business and plant of the Judd Manufacturing Company of Wallingford and in 1897 discontinued the Brooklyn plant.”
The H.L. Judd company, which also had a curtain pole factory in Chattanooga, TN, produced various products, including mechanical banks and ink wells.
The operatic soprano Rosa Ponselle was born in Meriden in 1897. After following her older sister Carmela into vaudeville, Rosa had an audition at the Metropolitan Opera arranged by Enrico Caruso and began singing there in 1918. She went on to become one of the great sopranos of the last 100 years, retiring in 1937, at the height of her popularity. Rosa Ponselle was born Rosa Ponzillo at 175 Lewis Avenue and a few months later the family moved to 168 Foster Street. In 1900, the family moved to 159 Springdale Avenue, a bungalow-style home which her father, Benardino Ponzillo, began to enlarge, first adding a second floor and an exterior wood staircase and later a third floor. This house was Rosa’s childhood home from her third year and it would remained her parents’ home for the rest of their lives. Rosa Ponselle died in 1981, but can still be heard in recordings. The house is now a multifamily home. There was a Rosa Ponselle Museum in Meriden a few years ago, but it’s now closed.
Joseph Porter, who worked for the Sperry & Barnes meat-packing plant (on Long Wharf) and was an original board member of the Free Public Library, lived in an 1879 Italianate house on Wooster Street in New Haven.
The Giles Hall House, built in 1760, is on South Elm Street in Wallingford. The house is near the site of the birthplace of Giles Hall‘s brother, Lyman Hall. After graduating from Yale, Lyman Hall became a physician in South Carolina and later settled in Georgia. He was a supporter of the Revolution and was a signer of the Declaration of Independence for the State of Georgia.
One of Connecticut’s few examples of an Octagon house (which was popularized by Orson Squire Fowler in the 1850s) is in the Yalesville section of Wallingford. The house, located at 31 New Place Street (and one of two on the street) was built around 1856. (Edits to this entry are in bold).
The first Congregational church to be built in Meriden was erected in 1727 in the south-eastern section of town. This was succeeded by a new building in 1755, in the center of town. This was then replaced by a new church, erected in 1830 nearby, at the corner of Broad and East Main Streets. This is the oldest surviving church building in Meriden. It was originally the home of the First Congregational Church, but the church split in 1848. With the center of population in the town moving westward, three-quarters of the congregation left to form a new First Congregational Church, while the remainder continued at the old location, which was renamed Center Congregational Church. (more…)
