In 1846, George Kenney erected the house at 945 Bantam Road, in the Bantam section of Litchfield. He was a partner in Whiting, Kenney & Son, paper manufacturers in Bantam. He and his partners also owned a store across the street, which was later purchased by Edward Crossman. In 1866, Crossman also purchased the Kenney House.
The house at 41 West Morris Road, in the Bantam section of Litchfield, was built between 1742 and 1755 (the first mention of the house is in 1755) by Jonathan Bishop, Jr. The left section may be the original part of the house (so the chimney would have been on the right side), with the right section added later. The original chimney would have been much larger.
In 1887, H. S. Patterson of Torrington erected the two-family residence at 1092 Bantam Road, in the Bantam section of Litchfield, for George Clemons. The latter, who owned the house for many years, but only lived in it himself for two years, later served as Litchfield selectman. The house originally had a front porch, with decorative detailing, that extended across the entire front facade.
The house at 1062 Bantam Road, in Bantam section of Litchfield, was built by Joel Clemons c. 1755-1756, shortly after he acquired the land from his father John. Joel married Sarah Pettibone in 1757. Aaron Bradley and his son-in-law, Henry Wadsworth, proprietors of the Bradley Tavern, owned the house in the 1820s. James K. Wallace and his wife, Abigail Kilbourn Wallace, bought the property in 1826. Their son, Dr. James K. Wallace, practiced medicine in the house. The Wallace family raised the house from being a one-and-a-half story cape to a full two stories. The house’s ell was once the parsonage of the Baptist Church and was moved from its original site on Cathole Road. A different door has been installed since 1987, when a photograph of the house was taken for the Historical and Architectural Resources Survey of Litchfield, Connecticut: The Bantam/Milton Area (1987). In recent years the house was home to Gilyard’s Outfitters, Ltd.
The Queen Anne house at 1104 Bantam Road in the Bantam section of Litchfield was built by John Coe, who acquired the lot in 1903. The house remained in the related Coe, Morey and Woodford families until 1982.
On October 11, 1898, the Hartford Courant reported an item of news from South Manchester: “The John Wesley Pentecostal Church has begun the erection of a church building on the lot north of Mrs. Catherine Cotter’s house at the center.” The church, founded in 1897, joined a new denomination, the Church of the Nazarene, in 1908. The Manchester Church of the Nazarene moved to a new church building in 1958. The 1898 church, located at 466 Main Street is now home to the Manchester Area Conference of Churches, which manages such charities as the Community Kitchen and the Community Threads Thrift Shoppe.
The great showman P. T. Barnum was born in 1810 in a house, built in 1768, at 55 Greenwood Avenue in Bethel. He lived in town until 1834-35. Starting in 1819, his father, Philo Barnum (1780-1825), ran a tavern in Bethel. The current Greek Revival style of the house is an alteration of the original saltbox home, as repaired after a fire in 1835 (or in the 1840s). The front portion of the house was destroyed, leaving only the kitchen and woodhouse. P. T. Barnum’s mother, Irena Taylor Barnum (1764-1868), who continued to operate the tavern after her husband’s death until 1835, lived in the house until her own death in 1868. [another source says that the original birthplace house was replaced by the current house on the site in 1843 and that Irena Barnum, who had moved away before that time, later repurchased the family’s old property).
