Sanford-Humphreys House (1793)

The Sanford-Humphreys House is located at the south-west corner of West and West Church Street in Seymour. It’s oldest section, to the rear, was built in the 1790s by Dr. Samuel Sanford, who became Seymour’s first physician in 1793 and established a smallpox hospital in 1797. After Dr. Sanford’s death, in 1803, the house was enlarged to its present size with the construction of what is today the main block of the structure. It was probably enlarged by General David Humphreys, who at the time was also establishing, with Captain Thomas Vose of Derby, a manufacturing business operating various mills called T. Vose & Company in Humphreysville, as Seymour was then called. In 1810, the company became known as the Humphreysville Manufacturing Company. Judge John Humphreys, the nephew of David Humphreys, later lived in the house. The authors of The History of the Old Town of Derby, Connecticut, 1642-1880 (1880) quote a resident of Seymour who was a contemporary of Humphreys as follows:

Two nephews of Colonel Humphreys represented him in the manufacturing business, and may have had considerable interest therein. The younger, William Humphreys—a fine young man as I first remember him—was the head of the counting-house, and, I think, cashier. The other, John, must have been a lawyer, for he was known as Judge Humphreys, and lived in one of the best houses in the neighborhood, a square white building that stands now on Falls hill, where the road that leads to Bungy crosses the highway. Judge Humphreys and his wife, an elegant, handsome lady, were great favorites with the Colonel, and were generally looked up to in the neighborhood as superior persons. He was one of the finest looking and most dignified men that I remember. Indeed, the whole Humphreys family were remarkable for great personal beauty, both in that and the next generation. Two of Judge John’s daughters, Mrs. Canfield and Mrs. Pease, were beautiful and elegant women.