The oldest parts of the house of Captain John Latimer, on Main Street near Wethersfield Cove, date to around 1690. The house is right next door to the Captain Samuel Latimer House. The John Latimer House is currently for sale.
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The Thomas Hart Hooker House, on Main Street in Farmington, was built in 1770 by Judah Woodruff for Hooker, a descendant of Thomas Hooker and of Stephen Hart, one of the founders of Farmington. Hooker had married Sarah Whitman Hooker in 1769 and in 1773 they moved to what is now West Hartford. The house was later owned by Samuel Deming, an abolitionist who used his home as a stop on the Underground Railroad. Deming also joined with Austin Williams and John Treadwell Norton in bringing the Africans from the Amistad to Farmington in 1841. The house, now owned by Miss Porter’s School, is on the Connecticut Freedom Trail.
The oldest house in Farmington was built by Samuel Steele, a farmer who served as Deputy in the General Court and lieutenant in the militia. Steele‘s wife, Mary Boosey, had inherited property in Wethersfield and the family moved there in 1678. After Samuel’s death in 1685, Mary returned to live in the house in Farmington. The house was owned by the Steele family until 1773, when it was sold to Isaac Gleason (the current sign on the house identifies it as the Gleason House). In 1843, Dr. Chauncey Brown moved the house back from Main Street and turned it to face south with its gable end towards the street. It was then used as a barn, but now has apartments. The building has been owned by the same family since 1920.
The Valley House in Collinsville (in Canton) was built in 1868 as a hotel by the Collins Company. Shops once occupied the ground floor. Today, the building has been converted into condominiums. The Second Empire style was very popular at the time of the hotel’s construction.
Gurdon Trumbull, a Stonington merchant, was of the volunteers who defended the town during the British bombardment of 1814. He was also involved in developing the sealing and whaling industries in town and became a prominent citizen. His Greek Revival house on Main Street was built after the fire of 1837. Trumbull eventually moved to Hartford in 1852. He had several notable children, including the author Annie Trumbull Slosson, author of such books as Seven Dreamers (1890), Aunt Abby’s Neighbors (1902), Story-tell Lib (1911) and A Local Colorist (1912). His son, J. Hammond Trumbull, was a Connecticut Secretary of State and a scholar, who wrote The True-blue Laws Of Connecticut And New Haven And The False Blue-laws Invented By The Rev. Samuel Peters (1876). Another son, Henry Clay Trumbull, was a Congregational minister, chaplain of the Tenth Connecticut Regiment in the Civil War and author of such works as The Captured Scout of the Army of the James (1869), The Blood Covenant (1885), Studies in Oriental Social Life and Gleams from the East on the Sacred Page (1894) and The Salt Covenant (1899).
Also today, check out the latest entries at Historic Buildings of Massachusetts, the Francis Parkman House in Boston and the Ashley House in Deerfield.
Dr. William Beaumont (1785-1853) was a U.S. Army surgeon who became famous as the “Father of Gastric Physiology.” His pioneering investigations of human digestion were published in his 1838 work, Experiments and Observations on the Gastric Juice and the Physiology of Digestion. Dr. Beaumont was born in a small c. 1750 farm house, built by his father, Samuel Beaumont, in the Village Hill section of Lebanon. In 1973, the house was acquired by the Beaumont Homestead Preservation Trust and moved to a new site on Lebanon Green, behind the Gov. Jonathan Trumbull House. The house is now a museum, owned and maintained by the Lebanon Historical Society.
Also today, check out the latest entries at Historic Buildings of Massachusetts, the Nims House and Wilson Printing Office in Deerfield.
Built around 1815, the Harvey Bissell House, on North Main Street in Suffield, is an elaborate example of the Federal style. Harvey Bissell, who married Arabella Leavitt in 1816, originally came from Windsor and became a successful shop keeper in Suffield. In 1846, he is listed as the town’s only retailer of wine and liquor.
Also today, check out the latest entries at Historic Buildings of Massachusetts, the Porter-Phelps-Huntington House in Hadley and Sycamores in South Hadley.
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