Gideon Welles House (1783)

The Gideon Welles House, on Hebron Avenue in Glastonbury, was built in 1783 by Samuel Welles, a Revolutionary War captain, for his son of the same name, who had married Anna Hale in 1782. The most famous member of the Welles family to live in the house was Gideon Welles, who was born there in 1802 and would become Lincoln’s Secretary of the Navy during the Civil War. The house was inherited by Gideon‘s brother Thaddeus Welles, but Gideon Welles made a notable return visit in 1864 for the funeral of his nephew, who had been a casualty of the war. During the visit, Welles sat on the porch with Admiral David G. Farragut to plan what would become the successful Union victory at the Battle of Mobile Bay. Gideon Welles had been living in a house on Linden Place in Hartford before the Civil War and later lived in a house on Charter Oak Place. Welles also wrote about his time in Lincoln’s cabinet in his book, Lincoln and Seward and in his posthumously published diary.

The house was lived in by members of the Welles family until 1932. It was originally located where the Welles-Chapman Tavern now stands, but was going to be demolished in 1935 to make way for a Post Office. Dr. Lee J. Whittles and others in town formed a committee to save the house and in 1936, Ernest Victor Llewellyn purchased the house and moved it to a neighboring lot on the New London Turnpike (Hebron Avenue). This committee would eventually become the Historical Society of Glastonbury. In 1974, the house was again moved further up Hebron Avenue to become a Senior Center. Still owned by the town today, the building now houses businesses and shops.