Peleg S. Barber House (1840)

At 55 Mechanic Street in the village of Pawcatuck in Stonington is a Greek Revival house built circa 1840. The National Register of Historic Places Inventory Nomination for the Mechanic Street Historic District indicates it is the Peleg S. Barber House. There was a Peleg S. Barber who served in the militia from Stonington in the War of 1812. Another Peleg S. Barber (1823-1901) was prominent resident of Pawcatuck. As related in the Illustrated Popular Biography of Connecticut (1891):

Mr. Barber was born in North Kingston, R. I., April 29, 1823. He received the advantages of a good common school education, and has been largely engaged in mercantile and manufacturing business, though at present confining his attention chiefly to transactions in real estate. He was for sixteen years in cotton manufacturing, and from 1850 to 1853 was in the gold mines of California. He married, early in life, Miss Sarah Gardner, who is still living. Mr. Barber is largely interested in the Pawcatuck National Bank, of which he is, and for sixteen years has been, a director. He is president of the People’s Savings Bank of Pawcatuck; also treasurer of the Pawcatuck Fire District since its organization in 1887, for sixteen years treasurer of his school district, fifteen years a member of the town board of relief, and a notary public. He was on the board of assessors for several years, and has held various other local offices in the town in which he resides, where he has led an active and useful life for thirty-four years, and is highly respected and esteemed by all his townsmen.

Peleg S. Barber was a great philanthropist and community leader. As described in the Sixth Annual Report of the School Committee of the Town of Stonington, Connecticut For the School Year 1915-1916:

At the annual meeting of the Eighteenth School District, held June 28th, 1899, Mr. Barber presented a writing, in which he stated that, “desiring to manifest in a material and permanent manner his interest in the public school he had deposited the sum of one thousand dollars ($1,000) in the Niantic Savings Bank of Westerly to be called The Peleg S. Barber Memorial Fund, the annual interest of which should be divided into three (3) prizes, to be awarded to those three students, of either sex, who are now or may hereafter be registered in the schools of the Eighteenth School District, who shall present the best three essays on any one or more subjects previously announced by the principal.”

When the fine school building on West Broad Street was dedicated in February, 1900, Mr. Barber gave several hundred dollars’ worth of books to the school library and also provided a fund of five hundred dollars ($500.), “to be known as the P. S. Barber Library Fund,” the income from which should be used in the purchase of books to add to and replenish what he desired to be a growing library.