Ephraim Hawley House
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The Ephraim Hawley House is a historic Colonial American wooden post-and-beam saltbox farm house built in 1683 by Ephraim Hawley (1659-1690). The house was built on land granted to Ephraim's father, Captain Joseph Hawley, in 1673 and was commonly called Captain's Farm. The house, a private residence, is situated on the east side of Nichols Avenue (Route 108), on the south side of Mischa Hill just north of Hawley Lane in the Nichols section of the town of Trumbull, Connecticut in New England.
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[edit] Research
Joan Oppenheim completed a research report on the house while studying architecture at Yale University in the 1950s. She concluded, after examining the structure, researching land records, probate records and the Hawley record, that it was Ephraim Hawley who built the house in December 1683 when he married Sarah Welles, granddaughter of Connecticut Colony Governor Thomas Welles. The date of construction was not only based upon architectural details of the house, but also upon comparisons with other homes of the period, facts given to her by the Curtiss family, who owned the house at the time, and information from the Hawley record. Oppenheim also stated in her report that the dating of the house compared with that of S.S. on file at the School of Fine Arts at Yale. The house lands and meadow were appraised at 352 pounds by the Fairfield County Probate Court. Ephraim died intestate and according to old English Law at the time, the title to the dwelling house went to his oldest living male heir, his eldest brother Robert Hawley. Sarah's dowery was returned to her out of her son Daniel's portion of lands and she received all of the moveable estate.
[edit] The structure
- The structure was built as a simple one and one-half story cottage or Cape Cod style house 36' (feet) wide by 26' deep with a massive 8' wide central stone chimney. The house frame is made out of hand hewn white oak beams. A 7' deep partial lean-to addition with a long steep pitched roof was added onto the rear of the house shortly after it was built making the house into a saltbox. The remaining lean-to was added to the rear of the house, preserving the original riven oak clapboard siding in the attic that was created, in the mid 1800s. The front roof was raised to a full two stories in height around 1881 by long time tenant Schaghticoke Indian Truman Mauwee or Truman Bradley, who had paid the heirs of Sarah Hawley-Nichols $450 for the house. A year later Bradley sold the completely renovated two family house to adjoining property owner and neighbor Clarissa Curtis for $525, making a $75 profit for his work.
- The oak post-and-beam frame consists of 8" by 10" inch girts, 8" by 8" plates and 8" by 10" splayed posts. The rafters are 8" by 8" and taper to 6" by 6" and the floor joist are 6" by 6" spaced 20" apart. The roof sheathing and flooring is vertically quarter sawn 1" thick oak boards with random widths between 12" and 30". The flooring is laid directly over 1/2" thick split oak boards. The mortise-and-tenon joints are held by wooden pins and the flooring is nailed with large hand wrought iron nails. The riven oak clapboard siding is nailed directly to the oak studs with large flat rose-headed nails.
- The house was built directly on the ground with a fieldstone foundation. There is a partial dirt cellar located on the south side of the house. The stone chimney is held together and the three flues are lined with clay. A brick beehive bake oven is on the right hand side of the rear wall of the kitchen fireplace and its small opening is spanned by a wrought iron lintel. There is a small tinder box built into the left wall. The fireplace opening is 4'4" in height by 6'10" in width and is spanned by the original 10" by 10" oak lintel which rests on oak beams. The side walls of the kitchen firebox are roughly dressed granite and there is evidence that a lug pole was used for cooking. The ceilings and walls are plaster on riven oak lath. The ceiling height is 7' 2" on the first floor and 6' on the second. The oak window frames have dimensions of 2'4" wide by 3'10" in height. The interior doorways are 28" wide by 5'11" in height and the interior partitions are made of 1 1/2" thick vertical oak boards. The vertical feather-edge beaded poplar panelling alternates in width from 13" and 15".
[edit] The Farm Highway
On December 7, 1696, the Farm Highway, present-day Nichols Avenue Connecticut Route 108 in Trumbull, was completed and laid out by the Stratford selectmen to the south side of Mischa Hill. The farm highway was 12 rods wide, or 198 feet, until it came to where Broadbridge Brook runs off the south side of Mischa Hill, at Zachariah Curtiss, his land, and at Captain's Farm. Captain's Farm was named after Ephraim's father Captain Joseph Hawley. The Broadbridge brook runs off the hill just west of the present-day intersection of Route 108 and the Merritt Parkway and flows southwesterly to Broadbridge Avenue in Stratford. In October 1725, when the Assembly of the Connecticut Colony approved the Parish of Unity, they referred to the Farm Highway as Nichol's Farm's Road. Nichols Avenue in Trumbull is considered by some to be the third oldest documented highway in Connecticut after the Mohegan Road, Connecticut Route 32 in Norwich in 1670 and the King's Highway, or Post Road Route 1 in 1673[1].
[edit] The Hawleys
- Abiah Hawley, Ephraim and Sarah's seventeen year old daughter, married William Wolcott of East Windsor, Connecticut on November 5, 1707. Their son William married Abigail Abbot and produced a daughter named Abigail Wolcott who married Oliver Ellsworth in 1772. Ellsworth was made the third Chief Justice of the United States (1796-1800) by President George Washington. Ellsworth was also a member of the Continental Congress during the American Revolution. He and Roger Sherman advanced the Connecticut Compromise, prepared the first draft of the United States Constitution and is credited by some to have preserved the name the United States Government. He was also a U.S. Senator from CT (1789-96). Their son William Wolcott Ellsworth, served in U.S. Congress from (1829-1834) and was Governor of Connecticut from (1838-1842). Abiah Hawley died on June 16, 1716 at the age of 26.
- Gideon Hawley, Ephraim and Sarah's grandson, graduated from Yale University in 1749 and worked under Jonathan Edwards and became a missionary to the Iroquois Indians.
- Ebenezer Hawley, Ephraim and Sarah's great grandson through Daniel, built a colonial mansion when he married in 1765. His large home and gristmill were located just east of the Pequonnock River in present day Trumbull Center near his grandfather Daniel's farm. He died in 1767, at the age of thirty, leaving behind a 1,135 pound mortgage held by John Hancock of Boston. This large home also served as a tavern during the Revolutionary War and in 1883 served as Trumbull's town hall. This is also where Mary Silliman, wife of captured American General Gold Selleck Silliman, fled from the British burning Fairfield, Connecticut during the American Revolutionary War. While staying at the tavern she gave birth to her son, Benjamin Silliman, who would become Yale University's first science professor and also the first Scientist to distill petroleum [1]. The house was sold by the town government in 1961 was dismantled and moved to Darien, CT to be used as a private residence.
- Gideon's grandson's Captain David Hawley and Major Aaron Hawley fought in the American Revolutionary War. In 1776, Captain David Hawley served under Benedict Arnold at the Battle of Valcour Island on Lake Champlain. This battle is considered by some to be the first battle of the newly formed United States Navy. David Hawley is also credited with capturing twenty British ships during the war for American Independence. He is most famous for leading a raid across Long Island Sound on November 4, 1779 to capture Tory Judge Thomas Jones to exchange for captured General Gold Selleck Silliman who had been taken prisoner out of his Fairfield, Connecticut home by the British in May 1779. Major Aaron Hawley served as Brigade Major under General Silliman.
- Captain Robert Hawley, grandson of Captain John, grand nephew of Ephraim and Sarah, owned the house until 1787. He was named Captain of the North Stratford Train Band in 1773 and at a special meeting held there on November 10, 1777, he was appointed to a committee to provide immediately all those necessaries for the Continental soldiers. On March 12, 1778, the parish of North Stratford made donations of provisions for those residents serving in the southern army stationed at Valley Forge under General George Washington. Of the fifteen men serving there from North Stratford, three were descendants of Captain John Hawley; Abraham, Nathan and their slave Nero.
- Nero Hawley, free negro man, was a slave owned by David Hawley who earned his freedom after fighting in the American Revolution.
- Eliakim Hawley married his cousin, Sally Sara Hawley, in 1787 and received the house from his father as a gift. Sally Sara Hawley lived in the house until her death in 1847 and was the last Hawley to live in and own the house.
[edit] The house today
Over the last 324 years, the appearance of the house has evolved as each family has left their mark expanding or adapting the house to accommodate changing ideas about space, function, comfort, privacy, cleanliness and fashion. Many original architectural details remain to include; dirt cellar, post and beam frame, chimney with beehive oven, quarter-sawn flooring, plaster walls and ceilings, window frames and the original riven oak clapboard siding. The house may be one of only three known First Period homes standing in New England that still retain their original riven oak clapboard siding in its original place.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- Frederick Haines Curtiss, A Genealogy of the Curtiss Family, Rockwell and Churchill Press, Boston, 1903
- Elias Sill Hawley, The Hawley Record, Press of E. H. Hutchinson & Co., Buffalo, NY, 1890
- Reverend Samuel Orcutt, History of the Old Town of Stratford and the City of Bridgeport Connecticut, Fairfield County Historical Society, 1886
- Joan Oppenheim, Yale University History of Art-53a-Research Report, New Haven, CT, 1950
- Connecticut General Assembly, The Public records of the Connecticut Colony 1636-1776, Press of the Case, Lockwood & Brainard, 1885
- Franklin Bowditch Dexter, Biographical Sketches of the Graduates of Yale College, Henry Holt & Co., New York, 1896
