| Ephraim Hawley House | |
| House information | |
|---|---|
| Location | Trumbull, Connecticut |
| Built | 1670–1690 |
| Architect | Ephraim Hawley |
| Architectural style | Colonial, Saltbox |
| Construction type | post-and-beam |
| Size | 36' by 26' |
| Governing body | Private |
The Ephraim Hawley House is a Colonial American wooden post-and-beam timber-frame farm house located on the Farm Highway, Route 108, on the south side of Mischa Hill in the center of the village of Nichols in Trumbull, Connecticut in New England. Construction of the house began between 1670 and 1690. [1][2] The house is unique, besides being the oldest house in Trumbull, it has been located in four different named townships in its long history, but has never been moved; Stratford (1670–1725), Unity (1725–1744), North Stratford (1744–1797) and Trumbull (1797–present).
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Joan Oppenheim, completed a research report on the house while studying Architecture at Yale University. She concluded, after examining the structure, researching land records, probate records and the Hawley record, that the house was built between 1683 and 1690 by Farmer Ephraim Hawley who married Sarah Welles, granddaughter of Connecticut Colony Governor Thomas Welles in 1683. [3][4]
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 which stated that Ephraim resided in Trumbull.[5][6] Oppenheim also stated the dating of the house compared with that of S.S. on file at the School of Fine Arts at Yale.
The house was dated to 1671-1683 in the 2002 Historic and Architectural Resource Survey produced for the Connecticut Historical Commission by Geoffrey Rossano, PhD.[1] The 2010 Historic and Architectural Survey of the Town of Trumbull, Connecticut produced by Heather C. Jones and Bruce G. Harvey PhD for the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism, dates the house to 1670-1683.[2] A piece of oak framing was carbon dated to 1710 with a standard deviation of 40 years.
The house began as a 1 1⁄2-story Cape Cod cottage thirty-six feet wide by twenty-six feet deep with an eight-foot-wide central stone chimney with three fireplaces. There were four rooms downstairs, a small entryway, parlour and dining room in front and the kitchen in back. The second story was one undivided loft. Due to its modest size, the house was expanded several times.
The first expansion took place sometime in the late seventeenth century when a seven-foot-deep lean-to addition was added onto the northeast corner of the rear of the house which was used at first as a borning room and became the buttery (room) and pantry. The north exterior wall is made of two inch thick oak boards. When the lean-to was built, the roof was extended, without a break, to within six feet six inches of the ground and gave the house its saltbox shape. The original hand-riven oak clapboard exterior siding is preserved in the attic that was created (see image).
The second expansion was completed sometime before the Civil War when a lean-to was added to the remaining rear of the house which reused the original poplar vertical feather-edge beaded paneling, that had encased the original stairs, as roof sheathing. The rear exterior oak clapboards were left in place preserved in the attic that was created (see image). At the same time, the front roof was raised to a full story in height and new vertically-sawn two inch by ten inch common rafters were installed. The second floor was petitioned into five small bedrooms each with a closet. The batten doors were pine and the cast-iron hardware, hinges and latches were made by Eli Whitney Blake. A new central staircase was installed, since removed, up against the kitchen fireplace and a wall was built that divided the house into a two-family.
In 1840, Schaghticoke Indian Truman Mauwee, or Truman Bradley, moved into the house as a tenant. In 1881, Bradley purchased the house from Charles Fairchild for $450 ($100 in cash and a $350 mortgage to Fairchild).[7] A year later, Bradley sold the house to next door neighbor Clarissa Curtis for $525 ($175 cash and Curtiss assumed the $350 mortgage to Fairchild).[8]
The first growth white oak post-and-beam frame consists of eight by ten inch girts, eight by eight inch plates and eight by ten inch splayed posts. The rafters are eight by eight inches and taper to six by six inches and the floor joist are six by six inches and spaced twenty inches apart.
The six inch by ten inch summer beams run parallel to the front of the house and are dovetailed into the girts. They are located above the interior walls that divide the front rooms from the kitchen, however, they do not support any joist. Since the house was plastered when built, the summer beams were reduced in size and concealed within the plaster ceiling. According to some Connecticut Architectural historians, the introduction of plaster, as an interior finish, brought about the end to the tradition of using summer beams. The home builder, obviously holding onto traditional building methods of the time, included summer beams in the frame, but in a reduced size, as they were beginning to be phased out altogether in this part of the state.[9]
The roof sheathing and flooring is vertically quarter sawn one-inch-thick oak boards with random widths between twelve and thirty inches. The flooring is laid directly over one-inch-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 four- to six-foot-length hand-riven oak clapboard siding is nailed directly to the oak studs with large flat rose-headed nails which was the typical material and application for the earliest New England homes.[10]
The first floor of the house was built at ground level with a very modest field stone foundation. There is a partial dirt cellar located on the south side of the house. The eight-foot-wide stone fireplace is squared up to the chimney girts. The three flues are laid up with clay on top of a ten-by-ten-foot stone foundation. The kitchen hearth is nine feet six inches wide by three feet three inches deep. There is a one-foot crawl space around the chimney foundation below the first floor. A forty inch deep brick beehive bake oven is built into the right rear wall of the kitchen fireplace and its small opening is spanned by a wrought iron lintel. The brick are seven and one-half inches long by three and one-half inches wide by two inches thick indicating they were made before brick dimensions were regulated in the Colony of Connecticut in 1685.[11]
There is a small tinder box built into the left wall of the kitchen firebox. The fireplace inside dimensions are four feet four inches high by six feet ten inches wide and is spanned by the original ten-by-ten-inch oak lintel, which rests on oak beams. The side walls of the kitchen firebox are roughly dressed granite. Cooking pots were hung from a lug pole. Above the ridge, the chimney flue outside measurements are forty eight inches wide by thirty eight inches deep with a course of three inch thick stone drip caps in the front and back.
The original front exterior door opened out and the stairs, closed in by vertical paneling, are located between the parlor and kitchen. The vertical feather-edge beaded poplar hardwood paneling alternate in width from thirteen inches and fifteen inches. The ceilings and walls are clam shell plaster on riven oak lath. Initially, there was no baseboard molding and the plaster finished flush to the flooring. The girts and posts were plastered over and not cased.
The ceiling heights are between six feet two inches and seven feet two inches on the first floor. The rear exterior door opening is five feet three inches high and originally opened out. An original casement window opening located on the east rear wall, in the kitchen, is twenty two inches square and is fifty four inches from the floor. This small opening was plastered over when the lean-to was built behind the wall in the 1840s. There is evidence that at one time shelving was installed in this opening.
The upstairs ceiling height is six feet. The surviving oak sash window frames have dimensions of twenty eight inches wide by forty six inches high, and also serve as studs for the clapboards and lath. The original interior doorways are twenty eight inches wide by five feet eleven inches high and the interior partitions are made of 1 1⁄2-inch-thick vertical oak boards.
Ephraim, the son of Joseph Hawley, was born on August 14, 1659 at Stratford.[12] He was chosen as a fence viewer with Benjamin Beach on January 17, 1687.[13] He was propounded as a freeman (Colonial) to the court of the Connecticut Colony at Hartford in May 1687 with his brother Captain John Hawley.[14] To be elected a freeman in the Connecticut Colony at this time, one had to own real property, a dwelling house, in his name.
Ephraim died on April 18, 1690 and the inventory of his estate was taken on May 14, 1690 and filed on June 12, 1690.[15] Local legend is that he and his horse were killed by lightning, and since no grave has ever been found and the inventory of his estate did not include a horse, this may be true. Fairfield County raised an army on April 11, 1690 to defend Albany, New York following the Schenectady Massacre during the King William's War. Hawley may have died during the trip there, from fighting or disease (small pox). His peer who served in the war, Lt. John Hubbell, died on May 1, 1690 at Wood Creek (Fort Ann) in New York and was buried at the spot where he died.[16][17] Lt. Agur Tomlinson, Ensign of the army raised in Fairfield County, would later marry Ephraim Hawley's widow Sara Welles in 1692.[18]
The house lands and meadow were appraised at 352 pound (currency) by the Fairfield County Probate Court. Since Ephraim died intestate, without a will, and according to English Law at the time, title to the dwelling house passed to the oldest living male heir, his half brother Robert. His widow's dowry was returned to her out of her eldest son Daniel's double portion of lands, which were sold, and she received all of the movable estate or personal property.[19][20] Hawley's estate was not distributed until December 14, 1706. [21]
Widow Sarah married Lt. Agur Tomlinson in 1692 and had a son named Zachariah in 1693. However, there were complications during a later childbirth and Sarah and her baby, named Sarah posthumously, died on June 29, 1694 in Derby and were buried together.[22] Tomlinson inherited his wives personal property according to law.
Soon after Sarah's death, the Hawley's began to have some differences with Lt. Tomlinson over the orphaned Hawley children. In 1696, the Probate Court at Fairfield, ruled that the Hawley's would "award Tomlinson 50 pounds and a bed worth 5 pounds and discharge him from all further charges or trouble in bringing up ye children of sd. brother deceased". Tomlinson returned 25 pounds worth of his deceased wife's property to her children, making an entry in the Stratford land records on November 11, 1696;
Know all men by those presents I Agur Tomlinson of Stratford in ye County of Fairfield in ye Colony of Conocticott in now England in consideration of ye entire love and affection that I have and bear to ye children of my deceased wife namely Daniel Hawley Gideon Hawley and Abia Hawley ye children of Ephraim Hawley late of Stratford deceased I do freely give grant and bequeath unto ye said children as followoth; to Daniel one plowshare and coffer one chain one cow and one calf, to Gideon one gun and sword one camblot coat and one stuff coat, to Abiah one blanket at Mr. Woolcots one bed one coverlid one rugg one flagin one warming pan curtins and valins, two pewter platters and two plates one pot one cup two pillows one chest of drawers one pewter candlestick and bequeath two mares running in ye woods to ye above Daniel and Gideon.
The final settlement between Lt. Tomlinson and brothers Captain John and Samuel Hawley over the children and the property were entered into the Stratford land records on November 30, 1696.
Daniel married Elizabeth Brinsmade in 1707 and raised 5 children in Trumbull and died on July 28 1750. On May 26 1708, Daniel recorded his 48 acres of land by way of the division in the woods of the six mile division;
lying in the sprains of the Pequonnock River west of Porters Hill bounded on the south with the land of John Hurd and common land and west north and east with common land being in length on the west side 84 rods and at the north end 80 rods in length and at the south end 108 rods wide here note that part of the above land at ye south east corner on the east side is a parcel of swamp land and is bounded on the east with a brook on the west side of Porters Hill and at the north east corner with a chestnut tree and stones laid to it the line runs westerly on the south end of the hill to the line that runs from the northwest corner bounded with a white oak tree on the west side of a hill about 10 links northward which line runs southerly to the northwest corner of John Hurds land.
Ebenezer, great grandson of Daniel, built a colonial mansion in 1765 for his bride, Hannah Beach the daughter of Israel and Hannah Burritt. He owned and operated the family gristmill which had been rebuilt in 1722 by his great grandfather and his cousin Ephraim. His home was located on a rise just east of the Pequonnock River, in present day Trumbull Center, on his grandfather Daniel's farm. He fought in the French and Indian War and died in 1767, at the age of thirty, leaving behind a 1,135 English pound note payable to John Hancock of Boston.[23]
This large home was converted into a tavern by Eliakim Beach during the American Revolutionary War and from 1862 to 1883 served as Trumbull's first municipal town hall. This is also where Mary Silliman, wife of captured American General Gold Selleck Silliman, fled when the British burned Fairfield, Connecticut during the American Revolutionary War. While at the tavern she gave birth to son Benjamin Silliman, America's first Scientist and pioneer in energy. [11]. The town sold the historic house for $100 in 1961 and it was dismantled and reassembled in Darien, CT.
Nero Hawley, a free negro man, was a slave who earned his freedom after fighting in the American Revolution in place of his owner Daniel Hawley.[24]
Gideon's grandson graduated from Yale University in 1749 and worked under Jonathan Edwards and became a missionary to the Iroquois Indians.[25][26]
David, great grandson of Gideon, served in the American Revolutionary War under Benedict Arnold at the Battle of Valcour Island on Lake Champlain on October 11, 1776. Hawley commanded the two-masted schooner USS Royal Savage with a crew of 50 men. His cousin Ephraim Hawley (1746–1777) served as his Lieutenant and his young nephew Samuel Hawley was also a seaman. The ship ran aground during the battle and was burned by the crew to prevent it from falling into British hands. The Royal Savage had been Arnold's flagship until he went aboard the ship USS Congress. This naval battle is considered to be the first of the United States Navy and delayed for one year the British attempts to cut the colonies in half.[27] 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.
Aaron, great grandson of Gideon, served as Brigade Major under General Gold Selleck Silliman.[28]
Abiah, daughter of Ephraim and Sarah, married William Wolcott of East Windsor, Connecticut on November 5 1707 at seventeen. Their son William married Abigail Abbot and produced a daughter named Abigail Wolcott who married Oliver Ellsworth in 1772 and lived in the Oliver Ellsworth Homestead.[29]
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 26.
John, Ephraim's brother, inherited the house sometime after 1690 and before 1721 when his name appears in the land record when his next door neighbor Zachariah Curtiss gifted his entire farm to his son and used Captain John Hawley as part of the southern boundary. John was named Captain of the Second or North Company of the Stratford Train Band and was also Justice of the Peace for Fairfield County.[30]
Robert, grandson of Captain John, was named Captain of the North Stratford Train Band in 1773 and at a special meeting on November 10, 1777, he was appointed to a committee to provide immediately all those necessaries for the Continental soldiers.[31] 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.[32]
In 1787, Eliakim, son of Captain Robert and Hannah, married his first cousin Sally Sara Hawley, great granddaughter of Captain John Hawley through Ephraim and Nathan, and received the new dwelling house as a gift from his father for love and good will.[33] Eliakim operated a tavern nearby in Nichols center called E. Hawley's Tavern. In the early 1920s, the inn was cut in two and one part moved so a new street could be built to service a new elementary school. The wooden tavern sign is displayed at the Trumbull Historical Society museum.[34] Eliakim withdrew from the Congregational Society of North Stratford on January 1, 1801 and joined the Episcopal Church of Trumbull.[35] Sally Sara Hawley lived in the house for 60 years until her death in 1847 and was the last Hawley to live in the house.[36][37]
On December 7, 1696 the Farm Highway, present-day Nichols Avenue Connecticut Route 108, was laid out by the Stratford selectmen to the south side of Mischa Hill.[38] The highway was 12 rods wide, or 198 feet, where Broadbridge Brook runs off the south side of Mischa Hill, at Zachariah Curtiss, his land, and at Captain's Farm. Broadbridge Brook runs off Mischa Hill 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 Connecticut Colony approved the Parish of Unity, they referred to the Farm Highway as Nickol's Farm's Road.[39] The Nichols Avenue portion of Route 108 in Trumbull is the third-oldest documented highway in Connecticut after the Mohegan Road, Connecticut Route 32 in Norwich (1670) and the King's Highway, or Boston Post Road Route 1 (1673).[40]
The Trumbull Historical Society organized its first historic house tour on October 24 1964. Tickets to the event were $2.00. The society printed a brochure with historical information on each house on the tour, which included the Ephraim Hawley House. The brochure proclaimed the Ephraim Hawley House was unequivocally the oldest house in Trumbull. It was presumed that the house was built by Ephraim Hawley between 1683 when he married and 1690 when he died. Mr. Elliott P. Curtiss owned and was residing in the house at this time, and put many of his 17th and 18th century antiques on display. The Hawley house was also featured on the cover of the first modern street map of the town of Trumbull published in 1965.
Over the last 340 years, the appearance of the house has evolved as each family has left their mark while preserving, expanding or adapting the house to accommodate changing ideas about space, function, comfort, privacy, cleanliness and fashion. Many original architectural details remain preserved including; partial dirt cellar, field stone foundation, oak post and beam frame, oak roof sheathing, stone chimney with brick beehive oven, oak interior walls, wide-board quarter-sawn oak flooring, clam shell plaster walls and ceilings over riven oak lath, poplar paneling, oak batten doors, oak window frames and the original riven oak clapboard siding in the lean-to attic.