Architecture

Daniel Norton House, Suffield, Connecticut

by

The house at 130 South Main Street in Suffield, around 1935-1942. Image courtesy of the Connecticut State Library.

The house in 2017:

This house was apparently built around 1812-1814, although the WPA Architectural Survey indicates that, according to the owner at the time, the oldest part of the house dates back to 1780. The later date seems more reliable, though, and is the date given in the National Register of Historic Places listing. The house was originally owned by Daniel Norton, a veteran of the American Revolution who had responded to the Lexington Alarm in April 1775. However, he died in 1814, right around the same time that this house was built, and his 14-year-old son Daniel Washington Norton inherited the property.

The younger Daniel subsequently became an agent for the newly-established Aetna Fire Insurance Company, and he later went on to have a successful business career. He was involved in several local industries, including the Windsor Knitting Factory, the Lacowsic Woolen Company, and the Eagle Paper Mill. Along with this, he was a partner in the cigar-making company of Loomis and Norton, and he was a founder and the first president of the First National Bank of Suffield.

Daniel married Mindwell Pease in 1822, and they had five children: Elizabeth, Lucy, Mary, John, and Emily. Mindwell died in 1857, and two years later Daniel remarried to Augusta F. Knowles. During this time, Daniel continued to live in this house, and he would remain here for the rest of his life. In the 1870 census, four years before his death, he was living here with Augusta and two of his children, and his real estate was valued at $10,000. This was a good amount of money at the time, but it paled in comparison to the value of his personal estate, which was listed as $129,000, equivalent to over $2.5 million today.

Although Daniel died in 1874, the house would remain in his family for many more years. In the early 20th century, the property was owned by his son, John H. Norton, and it was in turn inherited by John’s son, Harry D. Norton. Harry died in 1929, but the house was still owned by his estate around a decade later when the first photo was taken. By this point, the house was around 125 years old, and it had undergone some renovations over the years. Since then, though, very little has changed in this scene, aside from the removal of the porch on the left side and the loss of the two massive trees in the front yard, and today the house is one of the many historic homes that line Main Street in the center of Suffield.

Jonathan Rising House, Suffield, Connecticut

by

The house at 472 South Main Street in Suffield, around 1935-1942. Image courtesy of the Connecticut State Library.

The house in 2017:

This house is located at the southern end of South Main Street, right where the road curves to the southeast, toward Windsor Locks. It was built around 1750, and was the home of Jonathan Rising, Jr., who moved in here shortly after his 1749 marriage to Rebecca Mather. They were both in their early 20s at the time, and together they would have eight children: Rebecca, Jonathan, Eli, Silence, Lucina, Eusebius, Asa, and Apollos. It does not seem clear as to how long the family lived in this house, but Jonathan and Rebecca lived in Suffield until their deaths in the 1790s.

Aside from the fact that Jonathan Rising lived here in 1750, the historical record appears to provide few details about the subsequent history of this house. When the first photo was taken around the late 1930s as part of the WPA Architectural Survey, the house was listed as being just in “fair” condition, but the survey provided few other details about the home. However, it seems to have retained much of its original exterior appearance, and today it is one of the many well-preserved colonial-era homes that form the Suffield Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places.

Captain Jonathan Sheldon House, Suffield, Connecticut

by

The house at 1321 Sheldon Street in Suffield, Connecticut, around 1935-1942. Image courtesy of the Connecticut State Library.

The house in 2017:

According to some sources, this saltbox-style house is the oldest in Suffield. There are a few other houses in the town that could be older, but this seems to be the oldest one with a verifiable construction date. It was built in 1723 for Captain Jonathan Sheldon, who moved here from Northampton, Massachusetts after purchasing 1,100 acres of land here in West Suffield. He became a leading resident of Suffield, including serving as a town selectman, and he and Mary had a total of ten children, three of whom were born after their move here.

Captain Sheldon built homes for five of his sons along this road, which came to be known as Sheldon Street. He and Mary lived here for the rest of their lives, until her death in 1768 and his death the following year, and their son Gershom inherited the property. Gershom’s son Ebenezer later owned the house, making him the third and last generation of the Sheldon family to live here. He was a veteran of the American Revolution, serving as the captain of a company of militiamen, and he owned the house until 1800, when he sold it and moved to Ohio.

The next owner was Isaac Owen, another officer from the American Revolution. He was an ensign at the Battle of Saratoga, and was later promoted to captain before the end of the war. Along with this, he represented Suffield in the state legislature in 1781 and 1782. By the time he purchased this house from Ebenezer Sheldon, he and his wife Zerviah were in their mid-60s, and they lived here until their deaths in 1816 and 1817, respectively. Their son Benajah then inherited the property, and he owned it until the 1820s.

The house was already over a century old when Gustavus Austin purchased it around 1829, and after his death in 1855 his son, Thomas Jefferson Austin, inherited the property. During the 1860 census, Thomas was living here with his wife Charlotte, their children Charles and Nellie, and his mother Lydia. The family also employed a farm laborer and a domestic servant, both of whom lived here, and the property was valued at $10,000, plus another $5,000 for Thomas’s personal estate.

Thomas died in 1891, and his son Charles inherited the property. He sold it in 1901, a year after his mother’s death, and in 1904 it was purchased by Christopher Michel, a tobacco farmer who lived here with his wife Eunice and their two children, Frances and Phillip. He and Eunice were still living here more than 30 years later, when the first photo was taken as part of the WPA architectural survey of historic buildings in Connecticut. Despite being over 200 years old at this point, the exterior was still well-preserved, and survey noted that the interior of the house was original, while also describing the house as having a “wonderful setting” that “overlooks valleys and hills.”

About 80 years after the first photo was taken, the setting has not changed much. Overall, the town of Suffield has changed considerably, going from a farming community to an affluent suburb midway between Hartford and Springfield. However, this house still stands as an excellent early 18th century saltbox home, and the property remains an active farm. In 2007, the town purchased the development rights of the 36-acre property, ensuring that this nearly 300-year-old farm continues to be used for agricultural purposes for many more years.

Bissell Tavern, Windsor, Connecticut

by

The house at 1022 Palisado Avenue in Windsor, around 1935-1942. Image courtesy of the Connecticut State Library.

The house in 2017:

This house was built in the early 1790s for Ebenezer Fitch Bissell, Sr. and his wife Esther. They were in their late 50s at the time, and Ebenezer was a veteran of the American Revolution. In April 1775, he and a number of other Windsor men marched in response to the Lexington Alarm, and later in the year he was commissioned as a lieutenant in the 8th Connecticut Regiment. In 1776, this regiment became the 17th Continental Infantry, and Bissell was promoted to captain, serving until he was taken prisoner during the Battle of Long Island in August, 1776. Many American soldiers died in the appalling conditions of makeshift British prisons in New York City, but Bissell survived, and continued serving in the Continental Army after his release.

Ebenezer lived in this house until his death in 1814, and his wife Esther appears to have died around the same time. Their oldest son, Ebenezer, Jr., inherited the house, and operated it as a tavern. The house was located on the main route from Hartford to Springfield, so it was an ideal location for a tavern to serve the stagecoach travelers who passed through here. Variously known as Bissell Tavern and Bissell’s Stage House, the tavern was identified by a sign that featured portraits of Oliver Hazard Perry and James Lawrence, two naval heroes of the War of 1812. Ebenezer opened the tavern about a year after the end of the war, and by the early 1820s it was being run by his son, Fitch Bissell. He operated the tavern until about 1833, a few years before railroads would make the old stagecoach routes obsolete.

Although it does not appear to have been used as a tavern beyond 1833, the house remained in the Bissell family until 1841, a few years after Ebenezer’s death. For the rest of the 19th century, the property passed back and forth between the Bissell and Hayden families several times, but the house remained essentially unchanged on the exterior. By the time the first photo was taken, the house was owned by produce farmer Paul Kazanowski, and was listed as being only in “fair” condition in the WPA Architectural Survey. However, the house was subsequently restored, and today still it does not look much different from how it looked two centuries ago, when stagecoaches would stop here. It is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and it stands as the only surviving early 19th century tavern in Windsor.

130 Hayden Station Road, Windsor, Connecticut

by

The house at 130 Hayden Station Road in Windsor, around 1935-1942. Image courtesy of the Connecticut State Library.

The house in 2017:


The origins of this house are somewhat of a mystery, although it appears to date back to about 1760. It is several years older than the much larger Captain Nathaniel Hayden House on the right side of the photo, although both houses have matching brick, Georgian-style architecture. Nathaniel Hayden owned both houses, and there are several theories as to what this small cottage was originally used for. One possibility is that it was Hayden lived here for a few years before his larger house was completed in 1763, but a more probable explanation is that this cottage was used as his shop for his shoemaking business.

Like the larger house on the property, this cottage remained in the Hayden family for many years. Nathaniel’s grandson, Samuel Hayden, owned the property until his death in 1900. His only child, Lucretia, appears to have owned it until her death in 1918, but by the time the first photo was taken in the late 1930s, the property was no longer in the Hayden family. However, very little has changed in this scene, and both buildings are still well-preserved, more than 250 years after they were built. Because of this, both the house and cottage were individually listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1988.

Captain Nathaniel Hayden House, Windsor, Connecticut

by

The house at 128 Hayden Station Road in Windsor, around 1935-1942. Image courtesy of the Connecticut State Library.

The house in 2017:

Brick colonial houses are not particularly common in rural New England, but the town of Windsor has an unusual number of such homes that are still standing. This particular house was built around 1763 by Nathaniel Hayden, whose great-great grandfather William Hayden had settled in this area of Windsor more than a century earlier. Nathaniel had grown up across the street from here in his father’s house, but when he was 24 he married Anna Filer, and the couple moved into this new house around the same time.

Like his father, Nathaniel was a farmer, shoemaker, and tanner, but he also served as a captain in the town militia. At the start of the American Revolution, he led a group of 23 Windsor men who marched out following the Lexington Alarm, and he later served as a captain in the Continental Army, where he participated in the Battle of Long Island. However, tragedy struck the Hayden family in early 1776, when Nathaniel’s wife Anna died, at the age of 35.

Two years after Anna’s death, Nathaniel remarried to Rhoda Lyman. He had no children from his first marriage, but he and Rhoda had four children together: Nancy, Nathaniel, Naomi, and Pliney. Nathaniel lived here until his death in 1795, at the age of 57, but the house would remain in his family for many years. Rhoda outlived her husband by nearly 40 years, and lived here along with the younger Nathaniel and his wife Lucretia, whom he married in 1808.

Nathaniel and Lucretia had five children, all sons, who grew up here in this house. Two of their sons, Nathaniel and George, moved out of this house after their marriages, but remained in the Windsor area. Two others, Edward and Uriah, traveled to California in 1849, seeking their fortunes in the Gold Rush. Like most of their fellow Forty-Niners, though, they only had moderate success. Edward would remain in California, but Uriah eventually returned east, where he lived in New York state.

Of the five sons, only the youngest, Samuel, remained here in the family house. He was only nine years old when his mother Lucretia died in 1831, but he lived here with his father and his uncle Pliney, eventually caring for both men in their old age. He married his wife, Sarah L. Halsey, in 1849, and they had one child, Lucretia, who was born in 1851 and named for her grandmother. Nathaniel died in 1864 at the age of 83, and Pliney lived here until his death 11 years later at the age of 89, after having been blind for the last few years of his life.

Lucretia married in the early 1870s, but was widowed at a young age, and by the 1880 census she was living here in this house with her parents. Samuel would remain here in this house until his death in 1900, and his wife Sarah died eight years later. Lucretia appears to have continued to live here for the next decade, until her death in 1918. She had no children, so her death marked the end of over 150 years and four consecutive generations of ownership by the Hayden family.

By the time the first photo was taken around the late 1930s, the house was owned by Willard Drake, a mason whose property also included the neighboring John Hayden House. At the time, it was already recognized as a historically-significant home, and very little has changed in this scene since then. Now over 250 years old, the Nathaniel Hayden House still stands as a good example of a brick, Georgian-style home, and it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1988.