Governor Jonathan Trumbull House (1735)

Jonathan Trumbull, Connecticut’s last colonial governor and first state governor (1769-1784), was born in Lebanon in 1710. Educated at Harvard, Trumbull began working with his father, Joseph Trumbull, as a merchant in 1731. He became a delegate to Connecticut’s General Assembly in the 1730s and his later support of the Patriot cause led to his election as deputy governor in 1766, with the support of the Sons of Liberty. He became governor in 1769, after the death of governor William Pitkin. Trumbull was the only colonial governor to support the American Revolution, organizing Connecticut’s resources to serve the war effort and earning the praise of George Washington. Among the children of Jonathan Trumbull, Sr., who died in 1785, were Jonathan Trumbull, Jr. (a later governor of Connecticut) and the artist, John Trumbull.

The Governor Jonathan Trumbull House was built by his father, Joseph, between 1735 and 1740, and was inherited by Jonathan Trumbull in 1755, who enlarged and remodeled it in the fashionable Georgian style. The building is architecturally notable as the state’s only central chimney house with a center hall. It was also moved slightly north of its first location in 1824. The house has been owned and operated as a house museum since 1935 by the Connecticut Daughters of the American Revolution.