The Glebe House (1750)

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Built around 1750, the Glebe House in Woodbury gained its name because it became the home of an Anglican clergyman. A glebe is the farmland occupied by a rural clergyman as a benefice. In 1771, John Rutgers Marshall arrived in Woodbury as its first Episcopal priest and resided in the Glebe House. In 1783, a group of Episcopal clergy met in the house and chose Reverend Dr. Samuel Seabury as the first bishop in America. The house was later occupied by Gideon B. Botsford, a silversmith. By the 1920s, the house was in disrepair after passing through various owners. It was then saved from demolition through the efforts of the Seabury Society for the Preservation of the Glebe House. In 1923, the house was restored by William Henry Kent and opened to the public as a house museum in 1925. The next year, the eminent English gardener Gertrude Jekyll was commissioned to design a garden for the museum. It was never fully installed, but has since been restored according to the original plans. Visitors can now enjoy the Glebe House Museum and The Gertrude Jekyll Garden.

Strong-Porter House (1730)

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The earliest (eastern) section of the Strong-Porter House, on South Street in Coventry, was built around 1730 by Aaron Strong. Strong’s niece, Elizabeth Strong, married Deacon Richard Hale, who came from Newburyport Mass. to Coventry. In 1758, the Strongs sold the house to the Porter family, who expanded the western section and added a rear lean-to by about 1777. In 1930, the house was purchased from the Porters by the lawyer and antiquarian, George Dudley Seymour, who lived there during his restoration of the nearby Nathan Hale Homestead. Seymour mistakenly believed that Nathan Hale’s mother Elizabeth Strong Hale had lived in the house. The building is now a property of the Coventry Historical Society and is open to visitors as a house museum.

Hale-Newson House (1725)

Located just south of the Buttolph-Williams House, on Broad Street in Wethersfield, is a house of similar age, built in stages between the 1720s and 1750s. The first owner, Benezer Hale, began the construction of the house around 1725 by building what is now the section to the south (the left side). The section to the north (right side) was added later. Capt. Thomas Newson, a privateer during the Revolutionary War, added the lean-to on the rear, which gives the house a traditional saltbox form. Capt. Newson had a reputation for violence towards his slaves and was believed to have murdered a 42-year-old slave woman named Doll, who was found dead on the highway in 1802 from wounds inflicted with an ax. An inquest panel, on which Isaac Stevens sat, determined that the murder was committed by “some person or persons unknown to the jury.”

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John Hollister House (1649)

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The oldest House in Glastonbury was built in 1649, by Lt. John Hollister, and originally stood on the bank of the Connecticut River. Due to frequent flooding, it was moved to its current location, on Tryon Street, near Roaring Brook, in 1721. The rear lean-to, added around 1830, gave the house a saltbox shape. Hollister probably did not live in this house himself, as he maintained his main residence in Wethersfield, across the river. Instead, he rented it to three tenants, the brothers Josiah, Jonathan and John Gilbert, who farmed his land on the east side of the river. Hollister’s descendants would later make the house their ancestral home for many generations.

The Matthew Sadd House (1750)

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Built in 1750 by the carpenter, Matthew Sadd, on Main Street in East Windsor Hill, on what had been the original land grant of Maj. John Mason in the seventeenth century. The house was originally built as a saltbox, instead of having a lean-to added later. Sadd sold it to his cousin, Abiel Grant, in 1753. Both men later worked on the building of the Ebenezer Grant House. The Sadd House was later owned by Elisha Bissell, a surveyor. It was passed down in the Bissell family until it was purchased by Dudlex Clapp in 1914. He then built and lived in a house next door, leaving the Sadd House unoccupied.

Deacon John Grave House (1685)

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Built in 1685 by John Grave, Sr. for his son, John Grave, Jr. on the Boston Post Road in Madison, down the road from the Allis-Bushnell House, which was built 100 years later. The Deacon John Grave House originally consisted of just two rooms, until around 1710, when it was expanded into a center-chimney house to accommodate Grave’s growing family. Sometime during the Revolutionary War, the house was expanded again with the addition of a shed in the rear, making it into a saltbox. Seven generations of the same family lived in the house in the following centuries. In 1983, when it was in danger of destruction, the Deacon John Grave Foundation was created to save and restore the home, and it is currently maintained by the Foundation as a house museum.