Joseph Dwight Chaffee House (1889)

In 1889, Joseph Dwight Chaffee bought what was considered to be the most desirable lot in Willimantic and built an impressive Queen Anne house on the property. As stated in The Chaffee Genealogy (1909), Joseph Dwight Chaffee

was born in Mansfield, Conn., August 9, 1846, and married there, September 12, 1867, Martha W., daughter of George P. Armstrong of that place. Mr. Chaffee has served in the Connecticut Legislature as Representative and also as Senator from the Twenty-Fourth District. He has been associated with his father in the business of manufacture of silk under the firm name of O. S. Chaffee & Son, later called the Natchaug Silk Company of Willimantic, Conn. In 1883 he lived in Mansfield, and in 1894 in Willimantic.

He was known as Colonel Chaffee, after serving on Governor Phineas Lounsbury‘s staff from 1887 until 1889. In 1895, a financial scandal led to the liquidation of the Natchaug Silk Company and the arrest and trial of J. D. Chaffee for fraud (the company had been capitalized in a fraudulent manner by the First National Bank of Willimantic, a fact discovered when the bank’s cashier committed suicide and the bank was investigated). Chaffee later operated, with his son, another manufacturing company, known for its Natchaug Silk Braided Fish Lines. He later llived in the factory’s basement, after the company closed in 1927, until his death in 1938 at the age of 92. His former house on Summit Street in Willimantic was restored in the late-1990s.