Lee Methodist Church – Tolland Grange Hall (1880)

The building at 95 Tolland Green in Tolland was erected in 1880 as the Lee Methodist Church. It was the second Lee Methodist Church built on the site, replacing the earlier church, built in 1794. That building was moved back 200 feet and in later years was known as the “ole vaporatin’ house” where apples were dried. It was torn down after suffering damage in the Hurricane of 1938.

The Lee Methodist Church merged with the Tolland Congregational Church in 1920, forming the Federated Church of Tolland (now the United Congregational Church of Tolland). In 1959, the old 1880 church building was sold to the Tolland Grange #51. Formed in 1886, the grange had already been using the building for meetings since 1932. In addition to the Grange, other groups, such as the Boys Scouts, met in the building over the years. Before St. Matthew Catholic Church was built, the parish used the Grange Hall as its temporary home and celebrated the first Catholic mass in Tolland there on July 12, 1964. The Grange put the building up for sale in 2012 and it was sold the following year.

Winsted Bank (1851)

Sometime between the evening of Saturday, November 9 and the morning of Monday, November 11, 1861, robbers stole approximately $60,000, from the Winsted Bank. About $8,000 of this was in specie (gold and silver) and the rest included miscellaneous bills and treasury notes. The bank had been formed in 1848 (making it the second oldest bank in Litchfield County after the branch of the Phoenix Bank of Hartford on North Street in Litchfield) and the bank building was erected at 690 Main Street in 1851. Many of the stolen bills were Winsted Bank notes and the loss from the robbery led to the bank having insufficient net worth to receive a federal bank charter. The bank closed in 1864 and the building was acquired by the Winsted Savings Bank in 1867.

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Thomas Trowbridge House (1874)

The house at 158 North Street in Litchfield was built in 1874 or 1876 for Thomas Trowbridge. This was likely Thomas Rutherford Trowbridge, Jr. (1839-1898), a New Haven shipping merchant who traded with the West Indies. Trowbridge had his summer home in Litchfield, where he died in 1898. Later owners of the house included Mrs. Blanche Bucklin (in 1920) and Franklin Coe, who remodeled the house in 1940 from its original Victorian appearance to the Colonial Revival style.

Elizabeth and Frederick Wiggin House (1871)

The house at 145 South Street in Litchfield was built about 1871 as a summer home for Elizabeth and Frederick Wiggin. It remained in the Wiggin family until 1978, its residents including Charlotte Wiggin and Lewis Wiggin. Among the house’s later owners were Hope and Benjamin Gaillard. Designed by architect Florentine Pelletier of New York, the house originally had a wrap-around veranda that was removed in the 1940s by Frederick Wiggin’s grandson.

David Adams, Jr. House (1770)

The house at 4 West Simsbury Road in Canon was built c. 1760 or 1770 (the latter date is indicated by a sign on the house) by David Adams, Jr. (1740-1834). For many years, the house, located along a stagecoach line, was used as a tavern operated by Gen. Ezra Adams (1751-1836), who built a house nearby. He was also a leather-worker, making boots, saddles and harnesses. Ezra and George Adams ran a store in a small building connected to the main house. This building also served as a post office after George’s brother, Oliver Adams, was appointed postmaster in 1842. The building was removed in 1906 and the mail was moved to the main house, which had two front doors at the time. The last postmaster was Mary Vining Adams (wife of Henry H. Adams), who ran the post office from 1923 to 1937. For many years, the role of postmaster was shared back and forth with members of the Weed family (in 1826, Dr. Benjamin Weed became the first first postmaster in North Canton).

The property was later owned by Louis Diehms, who used the house as an antiques shop. In 1953, Mary and Whitney Jennison purchased the house, which they restored. They discovered evidence that the house once had a gambrel roof. On November 8, 1962, the restored house was one of five old houses in Canton opened to the public as part of a house tour to benefit a landscaping project at the Cherry Brook Elementary School. An article announcing the tour and focusing on the Jennison House appeared in the Hartford Courant on Sunday, October 28, 1962.