Strong-Chapman House (1855)

In the early nineteenth century, David Strong ran a tavern on South Main Street in East Hampton. His son, John C. A. Strong, a tobacco farmer, acquired the property after his father’s death in 1825. Thirty years later he replaced the old tavern with an Italianate-style house that still stands at 2 South Main Street. John’s sons, Clark and David, both served in the Civil War and later formed the Strong Manufacturing Company in Winsted.

Horatio D. Chapman (1826-1910), another Civil War veteran, acquired the house in 1869. As related in the Commemorative Biographical Record of Middlesex County, Connecticut (1903):

Horatio D. Chapman was born August 7, 1826, in the town of East Haddam. His early educational advantages were such as were afforded by the district and private schools of his native town, but he improved them to the utmost, and before reaching his majority had qualified himself as a teacher, and in that vocation met with marked success, his experience covering a period of twenty years in all. [. . . .]

The attempted disruption of the Union by the seceding Southern States fired his patriotic blood, and on August 6, 1862, he enlisted in Company C, Twentieth Connecticut Volunteer Infantry, serving with marked gallantry as corporal, until June 13, 1865, when he was discharged. His regiment was engaged in many of the most important battles of that great struggle, but he passed through them all unscathed, although more than once the cutting of his uniform or his hat by a Confederate bullet warned him, how closely Death hovered over the battlefield. Chancellorsville and Gettysburg were among the memorable engagements in which he participated. Later he followed “Sherman to the sea,” and tramped through the Carolinas and across Virginia’s “sacred soil” to Richmond. During these memorable campaigns, even while on the march, he found time to keep a diary, which—today—is of surpassing interest, and excerpts from which he is constantly asked to read when the “old boys” gather on Memorial Day to revive memories of the past and to lay chaplets upon the graves of the heroes of the Republic.

In 1866 Mr. Chapman came back to his native State, settling at East Hampton. For a year thereafter he was foreman in the Skinner saw-mill, and during the next year was in the employ of D. W. Watrous. For three terms he taught a village school in Chatham. Wearying of the teacher’s dais, he accepted an offer to become a traveling salesman for the bell and coffin trimmings industries of East Hampton. In this line of work he was successfully engaged for twenty-five years. In the Spring of 1899 he traveled for N. N. Hill, and he is still erect, hale and hearty, with undimmed mental factulties, at the age of seventysix years. He is a man held in high esteein by the community which best knows and appreciates his worth, and has filled various local offices with marked distinction and fidelity, among them being those of selectman (two years), member of the board of relief, and of the board of education for between twelve and fifteen years. In 1897 he served as doorkeeper for the General Assembly[.]