The house at 104 Silver Lane in East Hartford is a classic colonial saltbox. It was built c. 1785-1786 as a small three-room cottage with a rear shed roof by Abraham Clark, who had acquired the land in 1785. The structure was expanded into a five-bay saltbox around 1814 when there was a blacksmith shop just west of the house. There is evidence a tunnel once connected the house with the Hockanum River, about 250 yards away.
The house at the corner of Harrison Road and Woodhouse Avenue in Wallingford was built in 1755 by Willoughby Williams (1736-1776), just before he married Abigail Alling on Jan. 22, 1756. Williams served in the French and Indian War. As related in the Commemorative Biographical Record of New Haven county, Connecticut (1902), he
is supposed to have come from England, where he was born in 1736. He died in 1776. Where he settled in Wallingford is still known as the “Williams section,” and is still occupied by a large number of his descendants. He was a weaver by trade, and was a very active man, and exceedingly athletic; he was able to put his great strength and endurance to good use in the French war, when he was taken prisoner at Quebec, and confined by the French on board a ship. In the night he dropped into the river, swam ashore, and reached the English lines.
The house in Wallingford remained in the Williams family until the 1940s.
A plaque on the house located at 12 High Street in Stonington Borough indicates that it was built in 1765 and was the home of Capt. Jessie Beebe, “Master of a Packet Boat Running to New York.”
At 684 Norwich-Westlerly Road in North Stonington is a colonial saltbox house built in 1753.
The house at 2545 Long Hill Road in North Guilford was built in 1770 by Stephen Fowler (1744-1814) (it was once thought to have been built by his father, Daniel Fowler, in 1740). The house contained the first post office in North Guilford, and Stephen’s grandson, also named Stephen, served as postmaster until his death in 1869, followed by his daughter into the 1870s. Later, this Stephen’s grandson, Harold E. Fowler (1884-1981), owned the house, which has remained in the Fowler family.
The colonial saltbox house at 199 West Town Street in Norwich, adjacent to Bean Hill Green, is listed in assessor’s records as dating to 1724. A sign on the house gives a date of 1723 and the name John Waterman, Jr. This is presumably the John Waterman (1694-1742), who was called junior to distinguish him from his uncle of the same name. John Waterman, Jr. was one of the neighboring proprietors who re-set the green’s boundaries at a Town Meeting in 1729.
The sign next lists “Edmund Quincy Gookin, 1726.” According to Old Houses of the Antient Town of Norwich (1895), by Mary Elizabeth Perkins, Edmund Gookin, or Goodkin, (1688-1740), of Sherborn, Mass., bought the Norwichtown house of Sarah Knight (who operated a tavern) in 1722 and resided there until 1733, later purchasing a house in the Bean Hill district. Gookin was a follower of the Church of England and the first Episcopalian services in town were held at his house in 1738. According to Frances Manwaring Caulkins’ History of Norwich (1866):
The Gookin House was on the central plat of Bean Hill, “bounded southerly on the main road and easterly on the Green:” (now belonging to C. C. Williams.) The last of the Gookin family in Norwich was an ancient spinster, Miss Anna Gookin, who held a life interest in tho house for more than thirty years, and died in 1810, aged about eighty.
The last listing on the sign is “Lt. Jacob Witter’s Tavern, 1774.” Lieutenant of a militia company, Jacob Witter (1737-1798) kept a tavern/public house at Bean Hill. He was the son-in-law of Capt. Ebenezer Baldwin, who sold Witter his Bean Hill house in 1778. Witter then used that house as a tavern. An intriguing reference in the Genealogy of the Allen and Witter Families (1872), by Asa W. Allen, reads:
Jacob Witter, son of Ebenezer, married and lived on Bean Hill. He had no children and was insane.
The red saltbox house at 37 Buena Vista Road in West Hartford was built about 1752 by Samuel Stanley for his son, also named Samuel, who married Joanna Goodman in 1754. It was later owned by members of the Woodruff and Allen families and in 1943 was purchased by West Hartford to be a caretakers house for the town’s golf course. In 1976 the West Hartford Art League began leasing the building, which was restored to become the Saltbox Gallery.
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