The Richard Douglass House, on Green Street in New London, is a gambrel-roofed house built in 1801. Richard Douglass was a cooper and served in the Revolutionary War. He was a member of the Society of the Cincinnati. The house has a MySpace page.
After teaching at the schoolhouse in East Haddam, Nathan Hale went on to become the schoolmaster at the Union School in New London, teaching there from 1774 until the Revolutionary War began in 1775. Built in 1773, the gambrel-roofed school building was originally located on State Street, was moved to Union and Golden streets in 1830 to serve as a private home and was purchased in 1890 by the Connecticut Society of the Sons of the American Revolution. Under their guardianship, the building has been moved several additional times: first to the burial ground on Huntington Street, then, in 1966, to to Crystal Avenue and in 1975 to a spot next to City Hall. In 1988, the town paid to move the school to the Parade, at the foot of State Street. For some time, it has been used as a Visitor Center and museum. The schoolhouse has just been moved a sixth time, to a new plaza adjacent to the Water Street parking garage.
The Shaw-Perkins Mansion, on Blinman Street in New London, was built, beginning in 1756 for the wealthy merchant and shipowner, Capt. Nathaniel Shaw. The house, completed in 1758, was constructed by French Canadian builders, who used granite from the ledge behind the property. Nathaniel Shaw, Jr. inherited the house. He served as Naval Agent for Connecticut and the Mansion was a naval War office during the Revolutionary War. Nathan Hale was a visitor to the Mansion around 1775 and George Washington likely spent the night there in 1776. The house survived Benedict Arnold’s 1781 burning of New London, with only the kitchen being damaged. Shaw’s wife, Lucretia, died in 1781, after becoming ill from nursing prisoners and Shaw himself died the following year from a hunting accident. The house then passed to his brother, Thomas Shaw, and then to his sister, Lucretia Shaw Woodbridge and her husband, Judge Elias Perkins. The house was extensively remodeled by Dr. Nathaniel Shaw Perkins in 1845. His daughter, Jane Richards Perkins (1844-1930), sold the house and its contents to the New London County Historical Society in 1907, on condition she could reside there until her death. The house was restored and is open to the public as a museum.
Across from the First Congregational Church of Old Lyme, on South Green, is a house built around 1700 by Amos Tinker. In 1753, it was purchased by John McCurdy, a Scotch-Irish ship merchant who was a patriot during the Revolutionary War. George Washington spent a night in the house in April, 1776, when he was on his way from Boston to New York. In July, 1778, Lafayette was also a guest at the McCurdy home. John McCurdy was the grandfather of Judge Charles Johnson McCurdy, who lived in the home in his later years with his daughter. Judge McCurdy was a lawyer who served as Lt. Governor of Connecticut (1847-1849) and on the state Supreme Court (1863-1867). He was also U.S. Chargé to the Austrian Empire (1850-1852).
The Groton Battle Monument commemorates the Battle of Groton Heights, fought during the Revolutionary War on September 6, 1781. The battle was a result of the British raid on New London, led by Benedict Arnold. Fort Trumbull, on the New London side of the harbor, and Fort Griswold, built on the heights on the Groton side, were built to protect the strategic port of New London. Arnold had information from an American turncoat which enabled the British to avoid the fire from Fort Griswold‘s guns and surprise the Americans. The British forces then burned New London and, after a fierce battle, in which 150 rapidly assembled American defenders faced a British force of 800, Fort Griswold was captured. The American commander, Col. William Ledyard, is said to have been killed by his own sword after surrendering to the British. According to American sources, a massacre of the Americans followed the surrender, although British sources mention neither the death of Col. Ledyard or a massacre.
Today, the remains of Fort Griswold are part of a Connecticut State Park. Also on the park grounds are the Monument House Museum and the Groton Battle Monument. The Monument is a granite obelisk, constructed between 1826 and 1830. It is the oldest monument of its kind in America, preceding the Bunker Hill Monument and the Washington Monument. The Groton Monument has a marble plaque listing the names of those who fell defending Fort Griswold. In 1881, the centennial anniversary year of the battle, the top of the monument was enclosed and its height raised to 134 feet. Visitors to Fort Griswold can climb the tower and reenactments of the battle are also held at the Park.
In the eighteenth century, Coit Street (then Cove Street) in New London followed the shoreline of Bream Cove, an arm of New London Harbor. The Cove later shrank in the nineteenth century from silting and filling in to create additional land. When the William Coit House, on the corner of Washington and Coit Streets, was built around 1763, it was therefore on the water, although this is no longer the case. The Coits were a shipbuilding family and William Coit commanded ships during the Revolutionary War. Coit was also captain of a militia company, composed largely of sailors, that marched to the Siege of Boston in 1775.
Epaphroditus Champion was the son of Col. Henry Champion, the primary purchasing agent for the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War. Father and son drove a heard of 300 cattle to feed the Washington’s soldiers at Valley forge in 1778. After the War, Epaphroditus Champion, who was a merchant, later settled in East Haddam and served as a U.S. Congressman from 1807 to 1817. The house he built in East Haddam, on a bluff which provides a view of the Connecticut River, is also known as The Terraces. Champion was the cousin and brother-in-law of the merchant Julius Deming of Litchfield. He hired William Sprats, the architect of Deming’s home, to recreate a similar house for himself in East Haddam. In 1940, the Champion House was purchased by the artist, Northam Robinson Gould, who restored it. According to John Warner Barber, in his Connecticut Historical Collections (1836), the house “is distinguished for its bold and lofty terraces, and is a striking object to travellers passing on the river.”
