Partially hidden behind trees at 76 Bellevue in Bristol is a house erected in 1910 as the gardener’s cottage for William Sessions’ Beleden estate. It was built by Lemuel Stewart. The cottage was later the home of Charles Treadway, treasurer of New Deparure Manufacturing Company. He would later become president of the Bristol National Bank and was chairman of the committee that erected Bristol Hospital in response to the influenza epidemic of 1918.
In 1849, Sylvester Bailey purchased the land at 103 Main Street in Middlefield and a year later had built a house. Bailey, a gunsmith, established a nearby pistol factory with his partners, Henry Aston, Ira N. Johnson, John North, Nelson Aston, and Peter Ashton. Bailey died in 1864 and the house passed to his three sons, who sold it out of the family in 1866. Three Polish immigrant families then successively owned the house.
The nomination form for the Plymouth Center Historic District lists the house at 717 Main Street as a former ell of the Curtiss Hotel, known as the Quiet House. It gives a date of c. 1860, but I’m not sure if this is the date the ell was constructed or he date it was removed to become a separate house. It was the home of Caroline P. Root. Her son, Edward Root, lived with her. He was a carriage painter.
The A. G. Martin House, built c. 1902 and now a multi-family home, is located at 27 Moss Street in Pawcatuck. According to the Legislative History and Souvenir of Connecticut, vol. VII (1909-1910):
Albert G. Martin, of Stonington (Pawcatuck), was born in Warwick, R. I., March 6, 1859. He is the son of John and Elizabeth Barnes Martin. His early days were spent at Carolina. R. I., receiving such education as the village school afforded. On September 30, 1882, he married M. Nettie, daughter of George F. and Mary E. Davis, to whom one son was born June 23, 1895. Albert G., Jr., and who deceased December 15. 1899. Mr. Martin removed to Philadelphia, Pa., in 1886, and engaged in mercantile life; assisted in organizing the Frankford Grocers’ Association, serving as president and director for years; being also identified with public matters and charitable enterprises; a most successful merchant and ardent Republican in politics Returning east in May, 1903. Mr. Martin located in Pawcatuck, town of Stonington, and has shown a deep interest in all public matters both civic and moral for town improvement. For several years Mr. Martin has served as financial secretary of the First Baptist Church, of Westerly. R. I., and is an active member and official of the Westerly and Pawcatuck Business Men’s Association and the Board of Trade. He is a member of the school committee of the Eighteenth School District and moderator of the Pawcatuck Fire District. Mr. Martin is closely associated with fraternal organizations, being a member of Pawcatuck Lodge No. 90. F. & A. M.. Palmer Chapter No. 26, Westerly Lodge of Elks No. 678, and Misquamicut Tribe of Red Men No. 19. Mr. Martin served on the Committee on Finance.
At 47 Mechanic Street in Pawcatuck is a Greek Revival House, built c. 1840-1845.
The Greenmanville Church at Mystic Seaport was built in 1851 during the area’s heyday as a shipbuilding center. As related in Seventh Day Baptists in Europe and America, Vol. II (1910):
In 1838 three brothers, George, Clarke and Thomas S. Greenman, members of the First Hopkinton church, settled in Mystic, Conn., and commenced the ship-building business. Thirteen years later, 1849, they built a mill for the manufacture of woolen goods. About these industries sprang up a village called Greenmanville. The most of those working in the ship-yard were Sabbath-keepers, and being several miles removed from any Seventh-day Baptist church, it was deemed wise to organize one. This was done in August, 1850, with about forty members. The constituent members were mostly from the First Hopkinton church, a few from the Waterford church, and one from the Newport church. The largest membership, fifty-six, was reached the first year and it held pretty well up to this for thirty years. Its present (1902) number is eighteen.
Though it never enrolled a large number of members, yet it exercised a wide influence in denominational and other circles. George Greenman, a member of this church, was president of the Seventh-day Baptist Missionary Society for thirty-one years. The leading men of the church took an active part in the anti-slavery struggle, and the temperance cause has been supported by these godly men. Clarke Greenman, Thomas S. Greenman and Benjamin F. Langworthy served the town in the state legislature at different times.
The congregation was depleted with the decline of the shipyard in the 1870s and 1880s and the selling of the woolen mill to owners of another denomination. The church closed in 1904 and the building then served as a private residence and an apartment building before it was acquired by Mystic Seaport in 1955. The Seaport moved the church from its original site (near the current Visitor Center) to its present location. For a time, the church was called the Aloha Meetinghouse and was a nondenominational church. Mystic Seaport added the current tower clock, built in 1857 by the Howard Clock Company of Massachusetts. The clock is on loan from Yale, where it was once located in the Old South Sheffield Hall of the Sheffield Scientific School. (more…)
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