Houses

Solomon B. Griffin House, Springfield, Mass

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The house are 185 Mill Street in Springfield, around 1938-1939. Image courtesy of the Springfield Preservation Trust.

The house in 2017:

This large Tudor Revival-style home was built in 1904 for Solomon B. Griffin, the managing editor of the Springfield Republican. Born in Williamstown, Massachusetts in 1852, he attended Williams College, where his father was a professor and librarian. However, because of poor health he did not graduate, and after leaving college he came to Springfield, where he was hired by Republican editor Samuel Bowles as a member of the newspaper staff. Although he started out as a reporter, he soon earned greater responsibilities, first becoming the local editor and then, in 1878, the managing editor.

Solomon Griffin was a bachelor for much of his adult life, but in 1892 he married Ida M. Southworth, the 34-year-old daughter of the wealthy paper manufacturer John H. Southworth, who had died the year before. After their marriage, Solomon and Ida lived with her mother Elizabeth in the Southworth mansion on Round Hill in the North End, where they raised their two sons, Bulkley and Courtlandt. However, Elizabeth died in 1901, and within a few years the family had this house built on Mill Street, directly adjacent to 175 Mill Street, which Griffin had owned since the 1800s.

The house was situated on a large lot, extending along the south side of Mill Street from Pine Street to Maple Street, and all the way back to the Mill River. A century earlier, the property had been the home of David Ames, Sr., an early Springfield industrialist who served as first superintendent of the armory, and the lot was later sold to Horace Smith, the co-founder of Smith & Wesson. The old Ames house was demolished around 1890, and by the time Griffin purchased the property the lot was vacant. He built this house on the northwestern corner of the property, along with a carriage house on the opposite side of the lot, set back from the road.

Solomon Griffin remained the managing of the Springfield Republican for more than 40 years, before finally retiring in 1919, and he lived here in this house until his death in 1925. In the meantime, though, his son Bulkley was also involved in the newspaper business, starting out as a reporter for the Republican before establishing the Griffin News Bureau in 1922. He was a veteran of World War I, and he would also go on to serve as a war correspondent in Europe during World War II.

After her husband’s death, Ida continued to live in this house for the rest of her life. During the 1930 census, the property was valued at $100,000, or about $1.5 million today, and Ida was living here alone except for a servant and a cook. She was still here when the first photo was taken in the late 1930s, but she died soon after, in 1940. The property was subsequently acquired by Amity Lodge of the International Order of Odd Fellows, who continue to hold their meetings here more than 75 years later. Along with the rest of the surrounding neighborhood, the house is now part of the Ames/Crescent Hill District on the National Register of Historic Places.

Gad Lane Tavern, Suffield, Connecticut

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The house at 1007 Halliday Avenue West in Suffield, around 1921. Image from Celebration of the Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the Settlement of Suffield, Connecticut (1921).

The house in 2017:

Different sources identify this house as having been built in 1726, 1740, or 1744, but either way it is one of the oldest houses in Suffield, and was originally owned by Samuel Lane. Born in Hadley, Massachusetts, Samuel later moved to Suffield, where he married Abigail Hovey in 1709. In 1723, he purchased 23 acres of land here in the northern part of the town, and subsequently built this house at some point over the next two decades. At the time, Suffield was part of Massachusetts, but was part of a border dispute that was eventually resolved in 1749, when the two colonies established the present-day border, about a third of a mile north of Samuel’s house.

Samuel owned this house until 1765 when, a few years before his death, he transferred the property to his grandson, Gad. About 21 years old at the time, Gad’s father Samuel had died in 1748 when Gad was just a few years old. But, as the oldest son of Samuel and Abigail’s oldest son, he inherited the family home, along with 40 acres of land. The house was situated on the main road from Suffield to Westfield, Massachusetts, and for some time Gad operated a tavern in the walk-in basement on the left side of the house. Here, 18th century cattle and sheep drivers could satiate their hunger and thirst at the tavern, while their herds and flocks did the same in the surrounding pastures and at the stream that flows just to the left of the house.

In 1772, Gad married the curiously-named Olive Tree, and the couple had five children: Hosea, Gad, Comfort, Ashbel, and Zebina. However, in 1798 Gad filed for divorce, alleging that Olive had run off with another man and had stolen many of his possessions. A March 19, 1798 notice, published in the Hartford Courant, provides the details of her infidelity, with Gad stating that: “Olive formed an improper connection with one Joſeph Freeman: That ſhe has frequently and privately took and conveyed to ſaid Freeman, the petitioners bonds, obligations, papers, cloathing and other property: That ſaid Olive hath committed adultery with ſaid Freeman — hath eloped from the petitioner and now lives in a ſtate of adultery with ſaid Freeman.”

Gad subsequently remarried to Margaret Ferry, and in 1827 he gave the property to his son Ashbel. He owned the house for 20 years before selling it in 1847, and after changing hands several times the property was purchased by David Allen in 1849. He and his wife Mary went on to live here for nearly 40 years, running a modest farm that, during the 1880 census, consisted of eight acres of tilled land, plus six acres of meadows and orchards, and four acres of woodland. His primary crops were corn, oats, rye, potatoes, and apples, and his property had a total value of $2,500, plus $100 in farm machinery and $150 in livestock.

The Allen family would remain here until 1888, when David sold the property a few years before he and Mary died. The property changed hands several times over the next few decades, and by the time the first photo was taken the house had been significantly altered, including the addition of three dormers. Well into the 20th century, the house lacked modern conveniences such as heat and bathrooms, and by the late 1930s it was owned by Raymond Kent, Sr., a tobacco farmer who used the house as a residence for his field hands. However, in 1942 his son, Raymond Kent, Jr., restored the house, and today it still stands well-preserved as one of the oldest surviving houses in Suffield.

William Soper House, Windsor, Connecticut

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The house at 1580 Poquonock Avenue in Windsor, around 1935-1942. Image courtesy of the Connecticut State Library.

The house in 2017:

This house was built in 1806 in the village of Poquonock, which is located in the northern part of Windsor, along the banks of the Farmington River. The house was originally owned by William Soper, who was about 36 years old when he moved here with his wife Rebecca and their young children. At the time, the Poquonock church was in the midst of a schism, with a majority of the members favoring Universalism over traditional Christian doctrine, and the church was steadily losing members by the early 19th century. The church appears to have been completely defunct by 1821, but for the next several decades some Poquonock residents held occasional religious meetings, with historian Henry Reed Stiles noting, in The History and Genealogies of Ancient Windsor, Connecticut, that the Soper family sometimes held such meetings.

Aside from these meetings, the village of Poquonock went several decades without a regular church. In his book, Stiles noted that the village was, in the first half of the 19th century, in the midst of “a moral and religious lethargy which had so deteriorated the character of this beautiful portion of Windsor that it was familiarly spoken of in the surrounding country as Sodom.” However, in the 1830s William Soper became one of the leaders in an effort to start a new church congregation. From 1835 to 1841, an assortment of visiting pastors preached at the village’s public hall, with Soper serving as part of a three-man committee that was responsible for finding suitable clergymen, and in 1841 the church was formally established, with John R. Adams ordained as the first minister.

William Soper lived here until his death in 1844, and in his will he left the house to his wife Rebecca, with their son Chester to inherit it after her death. However, Rebecca ended up outliving Chester, and after her death in 1855 the property was divided between their two surviving sons, Ira and Merritt. After Ira’s death in 1861, Merritt acquired the property, and during the 1870 census he was 70 years old and was living here with his wife Maria and their daughter Mary. Maria died in 1874, though, and Merritt died five years later, after falling and dislocating his neck.

During the first half of the 20th century, this house was owned by John B. Parker, a tobacco farmer who had also represented Windsor in the state legislature in 1903. He died in 1930, but his wife Estella was still living here later in the decade, around the time that the first photo was taken. During the 1940 census, she was 82 years old and lived here alone, although she did rent a portion of the house to a young couple, Carroll and Muriel Perry, who paid Estella $10 in monthly rent. Estella died five years later, and at some point afterward the house was expanded with an addition on the right side. However, this scene remains otherwise unchanged, and the house still stands here in the center of the village of Poquonock, more than 200 years after it was built by William Soper.

Joel Palmer House, Windsor, Connecticut

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The house at 280 Pigeon Hill Road in Windsor, around 1935-1942. Image courtesy of the Connecticut State Library.

The scene in 2017:

This house was built in 1766 by Joel Palmer, who moved in here a few years after his marriage to Anna Hayden. Joel was a veteran of the French and Indian War, serving in the 1st Windsor Company in 1755, during the early years of the war. He subsequently married Anna in 1761, and they had ten children who grew up here: Ann, Naomi, Lattimer, Joel, Harvey, Martin, Rubah, Hezekiah, Horace, and Zulma.

Joel died in 1812, and Anna died around 1825, but this house would remain in their family for many more years. By the second half of the 19th century, the property was owned by Martin’s son, who was also named Joel Palmer. This younger Joel was a farmer, and during the 1850 census he was 45 years old and was living here with his mother Nancy, his wife Emily, and their five children: Charles, James, Osbert, Martin, and Maria. However, Emily died later in 1850, and Joel eventually remarried in 1873, to Elizabeth Goodwin.

Census records from the second half of the 19th century give an insight into the crops that Joel Palmer produced here on his farm. In 1870, he had 35 acres of improved land, plus 12 acres of woodland and 12 acres of other unimproved land, for a total value of $5,000. Like almost every farmer in Windsor at the time, he grew tobacco, and his other crops included corn, oats, and buckwheat. A decade later, these were still major crops for him, but the 1880 census also noted that his farm produced 100 bushels of potatoes, 50 bushels of apples, and 10 cords of wood.

The first photo was taken around the late 1930s, as part of the WPA Architectural Survey of historic houses in Connecticut. By this point, the house was no longer in the Palmer family, and the survey documentation listed it as being in poor condition, with an interior that had been completely changed from its 18th century appearance. The yard surrounding the house also seems to have been poorly-maintained, with what appears to be overgrown bushes and weeds in front and to the left of the house.

Despite its condition, the house stood here for many more years, and at some point underwent exterior renovations, including replacing the clapboards with wooden shingles and adding a new front door. However, by the early 2000s the house was abandoned and was again in poor condition. At this point, the surrounding neighborhood had also changed significantly, and open farmland had become housing subdivisions and suburban office parks, with Interstate 91 running less than a quarter mile to the east of here. The house was finally demolished around 2012 or 2013, and today the lot remains vacant except for a barn in the back corner of the property.

John Hillier House, Windsor, Connecticut

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The house at 140 East Street in Windsor, around 1935-1942. Image courtesy of the Connecticut State Library.

The house in 2017:

According to local tradition, this house was built around 1650 by John Hillier, one of the original settlers in Windsor. If accurate, this would make this house the second-oldest in the town, and among the oldest surviving houses in the entire country. However, if so, it must have undergone some significant alterations, both on the interior and exterior, because its appearance does not bear any resemblance to typical 17th century New England architecture.

This house is certainly very old, though, dating back to at least the early 1800s, when it was owned by the Hatheway family. The documentation for the first photo, done between 1935 and 1942, notes that the house had been in the family for over 100 years at that point, although it seems unclear as to which members of the family owned the house in the first half of the 1800s.

By 1869, the county atlas showed that Duane Hatheway owned both this house and a neighboring one, with real estate that was valued at $4,000 in the 1870 census. Duane had been married twice before, but his first two wives, Lucinda Barrett and Julia Huntley, both died only a few years after their marriages. He and Julia had two children, Freddie and Cora, although Freddie died in 1863 when he was just 10 days old.

Duane married his third wife, Laura Tooker, in 1866. He was 45 years old at the time, and she was about 25, and they had six children together: Clinton, Adin, Louie, Emory, Annie and Grace. However, despite being widowed twice and losing a young child, Duane faced even more tragedy in his life in 1877, when Clinton, Louie, and Annie died within a week of each other, presumably from an infectious disease that struck the family.

Although Duane was 20 years older than her, he would eventually outlive Laura, who died in 1905. He died the following year, at the age of 84, and his son Adin inherited the property. Adin Hatheway was a blacksmith, and had a shop nearby at the present-day corner of East Street and Clubhouse Drive. He later worked for General Electric, and he lived here in this house with his brother Emory, Emory’s wife Alice, and their daughters, Edna and Ruth. In early 20th century census records, Emory was variously listed as a machinist in a tool factory and as a farmer, but he was also a noted taxidermist and collector of Indian artifacts.

Adin and Emory were still living in this house when the first photo was taken, and they would remain here for the rest of their lives. They both died in February, 1962, when Adin was 92 and Emory was 88. Since then, the clapboards on the exterior of the house have been replaced with modern siding, but otherwise its appearance has not significantly changed in the past 80 years.

William Phelps, Jr. House, Windsor, Connecticut

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The house at 124 East Street in Windsor, around 1935-1942. Image courtesy of the Connecticut State Library.

The house in 2017:

According to local tradition, this house was built in 1670 for William Phelps, Jr., the son of one of Windsor’s founders. As a boy, the younger William had immigrated to the American colonies in 1630 along with his father, settling first in Dorchester, Massachusetts, before moving to Windsor. The elder William built a house here on East Street along the banks of the Farmington River, and, according to some accounts, William, Jr. later built this house nearby.

If accurate, the 1670 date would make this house among the oldest homes not just in Windsor, but in all of Connecticut as well. However, there seems to be significant doubt as to the accuracy of this date. The saltbox-style design of the house did not become common until the first half of the 18th century, long after William Phelps’s death, and there is little in the home’s exterior appearance to suggest that it is from the 17th century. The documentation that accompanied the first photo, done as part of the WPA Architectural Survey of historic homes in Connecticut, indicates that the house was probably built after 1700, and it identifies the first owner as William Griswold, while also stating that it was known as the Mather House.

The subsequent history of this house seems equally uncertain. The 1798 map of the town shows two houses on this section of East Street, which were owned by Daniel and Roger Phelps, and the 1855 county map also shows members of the Phelps family living here. However, in the absence of street numbers, it is difficult to pinpoint which present-day house was owned by which person. By 1869, though, the house was owned by Hiram Buckland, a farmer who also owned a neighboring house to the right. The other house, which has since been demolished, seems to have been the larger of the two, and was probably Buckland’s actual residence.

After Buckland’s death in 1887, the property was purchased by H. Sidney Hayden, a prominent landowner and philanthropist. He, in turn, sold the property to the town of Windsor for a nominal fee, to establish a poor farm for the town’s indigent residents. This house, while located on the property, does not appear to have been part of the poor farm, although it was owned by the town for many years, and rented out to a number of different tenants. During the 1920 census, for example, it was rented by Peter J. Reittinger, a clerk for General Electric. At the time, he was 40 years old and was living here with his wife Mary, their three children, and a young nephew.

By the time the first photo was taken, the house was being rented by Elmer J. Norman, who paid the town $18 per month in rent, and was living here with his wife Rose and their four daughters. Several decades earlier, Elmer had served in World War I, and after the war he began working for the Windsor Highway Department. He went on to work for the town until his retirement in 1959, but he lived here in this house until his death in 1980. During this time, he was also responsible for the flags at the adjacent Veterans Memorial Cemetery, which was established on the former site of the poor farm.

In 1961, this house was the subject of a proposal to dismantle it and rebuilt it on Palisado Avenue, next to the historic Flyer House. Around the same time, the other house on the former poor farm property was demolished, in order to expand the veterans’ cemetery. However, this house was never moved, and it survives with few changes from the first photo, aside from more historically-appropriate windows. After more than a century of town ownership, the house was finally sold in 2006, and it is now a privately-owned residence once again. It is probably not as old as the traditional 1670 date, but it is undoubtedly still very old, most likely dating back to the early 18th century, and it stands as one of the few remaining saltbox-style homes in Windsor.