gambrel - Historic Buildings of Connecticut

Nathaniel Hayward House (1775)

Around 1775, Amos Otis built a house for Capt. Dudley Wright, on the site of the old house Wright’s father, Joseph Wright in Colchester. The impressive new house also served as a store, a tavern and, on the second floor ballroom, as the meeting place of the Wooster Lodge of Masons. Capt. Wright’s daughter Lydia married Dr. John Watrous in 1783 and the couple moved into the house’s second floor. Wright lived with them until his death in 1808. In 1823, Dr. Frederick Morgan married the Watrous’s daughter, Caroline Watrous. When Dr. Watrous died in 1842, they lived in the house until 1848, when they sold the house to Nathanial Hayward. Hayward was an inventor who had conceived a process of vulcanization of rubber by treating it with sulphur and a patent for this was issued in 1837 to Hayward’s colleague, Charles Goodyear. [For more information, see Some Account of Nathaniel Hayward’s Experiments with India Rubber which resulted in discovering the Invaluable Compound of that article with Sulphur (1865)]. Hayward had founded the Hayward Rubber Company and built a factory in Colchester in 1847. In 1885, the factory closed, but was reoccupied by the Colchester Rubber Company in 1888, which operated until it was absorbed by the United States Rubber Trust in 1892.

The house was embellished by Hayward, who added a bay window. He also presented his front lawn to the town as a park. The Hayward family lived in the home into the twentieth century. The last descendants to occupy the house in the 1940s wanted it to be razed, but it was purchased and saved, although not kept up for many years. It has recently been a bed and breakfast called the Hayward House Inn, but is now a real estate office.

Marlborough Tavern (1740)

Built in 1740 at the intersection of two main roads in what would later become the town of Marlborough, the Marlborough Tavern has served, over the years, as a tavern, hotel and, in the 1790s, a post office. It is currently a restaurant. According to the Report of the Celebration of the Centennial of the Incorporation of the Town of Marlborough, August 23d and 25th 1903 (1904), by Mary Hall:

Marlborough was lifted from its isolated condition by the building of the Hartford and New London turnpike in 1800, the incorporation of the Hebron and Middle Haddam turnpike company in 1802, and of the Chatham and Marlborough company in 1809. The completion of these roads was of great advantage to the town. The barns of the Marlborough inn or tavern, then kept by Elisha Buell. furnished a place for change of horses and refreshment for travelers. Guests of national reputation were frequently entertained here. Among those known to have been entertained were Presidents James Monroe and Andrew Jackson.

The Marlborough Tavern was built by the Buell family and in the late eighteenth to early nineteenth centuries was operated by Col. Elisha Buell, who also established a “gun manufactory and repair shop” and was “a fine workman in iron and steel,” creating the Buell Musket. His son, General Enos Buell, was a captain in the War of 1812 and succeeded his father as postmaster. Sheriffs transporting prisoners to Old Newgate Prison would stop at the Tavern, where their was a holding cell on the third floor. The Tavern also became the summer home of Mary Hall, compiler of the book quoted from above. Hall became Connecticut’s first female lawyer after the the Connecticut Supreme Court upheld her right to be an attorney in 1882. Hall practiced law for more than four decades and also founded the Good Will Club of Hartford, a charity for boys.

The Elijah Hills House (1810)

Built around 1810 in the Hillstown section of East Hartford, the Elijah Hills House was where the Hillstown Grange #87 held its first meeting.

Nathaniel Foote House (1702)

The oldest house in Colchester is the Nathaniel Foote House, which has been moved several times, but is now located on Norwich Avenue. The house was begun in 1699 by Nathaniel Foote of Wethersfield, who was involved in the development of Colchester as a new community. Foote intended to settle in town, but ill health prevented him from completing the new house, which was finished in 1702 by his son, Nathaniel, shortly before his father’s death. It was soon occupied by the elder Nathaniel’s widow and four youngest children. In the early nineteenth century, the house stood on the Hartford Turnpike and was used as a post office. In 1896, the then neglected house was on Broadway and was bought by Mrs. Frederick G. Bock, who repaired it and gave it to the Colonel Henry Champion Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. The D.A.R. moved the house to its present site in 1925 and restored it for use as a historical museum and chapter house.

Benjamin Trumbull House (1790)

The Benjamin Trumbull House in Colchester was built sometime between 1790 and 1801. According to Biographical Sketches of the Graduates of Yale College with Annals of the College History, Vol. IV (1907), by Franklin Bowditch Dexter:

Benjamin Trumbull, the only son of the Rev. Dr. Benjamin Trumbull (Yale 1759) who survived infancy, was born in North Haven, Connecticut, on September 24, 1769. He remained in New Haven for two years after graduation, filling the office of College Butler, and pursuing the study of law. On his admission to the bar he returned to the vicinity of the birthplace of his parents, and settled in Colchester, Connecticut, where he had a long career of usefulness. He was sent to the Legislature as a Representative eleven times between 1807 and 1831, and for about twenty years (1818-38) was Judge of the Probate Districts of East Haddam and Colchester.

Benjamin Trumbull’s son, Lyman Trumbull, was born and raised in the house. Lyman Trumbull later became a senator from Illinois and a founder of the Republican Party and an associate of Abraham Lincoln. He helped author the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ending slavery. The house is on the Connecticut Freedom Trail.

The Captain John Johnson House (1795)

The community of Middle Haddam in the Town of East Hampton, like neighboring Haddam Neck, was once a shipbuilding center. Captain John Johnson, who had been a privateer, began a sail loft on his property at Knowles Landing, employing four women to sew the sails. His house, in the colonial cape style, was built around 1795 and has been much altered over the years.

Makens Bemont House (1761)

The Historical Society of East Hartford has a complex of three historic buildings in Martin Park. The oldest is the Makens Bemont House, commonly called the Huguenot House. It was built by Edmund Bemont in 1761 and was purchased, four years later, by his son, Makens Bemont, a saddle maker. The house’s last owner donated it to the Historical Society in 1968 and in 1971 it was moved to the park from its original location at the intersection of Tolland Street and Burnside Avenue. Since its relocation and restoration, the Huguenot House has acquired a reputation as a haunted house.