History in towns: Stonington Borough, Connecticut

Magazine Antiques, July, 2003 by Mary McGrath Thacher

Stonington Borough, part of the Town of Stonington in southeastern Connecticut, was first settled in 1753, a little more than a century after William Chesebrough (1594-1667) established a trading post at nearby Wequetequock Cove in 1649. Built on a granite peninsula less than a mile long, with wetlands to the north and the sea on the other three sides, the borough had only limited possibilities for expansion (see Fig. 1). In 1873 the New York Daily Graphic described it as one of the most picturesque of the Connecticut villages along the northern shore of Long Island Sound." (1) Although some houses survive from the eighteenth century, the majority are in the nine-teenth-century Greek revival style, reflecting the wealth brought to the town by sealing and whaling after the Revolutionary War.

Long Point, as Stonington Borough was first known, occupies the southwestern corner of the original grant given by the Town of New London to Chesebrough. By 1745 his grandson Elihu Chesebrough Sr. (1668-1750) had deeded to his own son and namesake, Elihu Chesebrough Jr. (1704-1769),

all that tract... that I now live on 300 Acres, with ye meadow adjoining--also that tract--caled ye Old Field lying by Och Caset Cove [Oxecosset Cove]...and also that tract of land I bought of Mr. Amos Chesebrough adjoining. (2)

On August 7, 1753, Elihu Chesebrough Jr. wrote two deeds on Long Point to "Edward Denison [1724-1758] mariner" (3) for land on either side of a road to be built from Stonington Harbor to Preston, a rich agricultural community east of Norwich By this time Stonington itself was a farming community producing corn, wheat, livestock, and cheese for city markets and for the Caribbean trade. Elihu Chesebrough Jr. gave Denison the right to

cut as much timber on my land at Long Point, both for Quantity and Quality such as is suitable for building a wharf about 30 feet wide, and as long as said Denison think it is for him or the interest of the public. Also to allow him to take off from said Point what stones shall be needed for the same... said Denison to proceed and build the same with convenient speed, extraordinaries eccepted, else the above promise becomes void. (4)

Denison wasted no time: he built a wharf to the west into Stonington Harbor and not far away a large house. He did not live long to enjoy this house, however, for he died when his boat went aground on Turner's Reef (today Cormorant Reef, south of Latimer Point) on April 18, 1758. (5) The house was destroyed on April 2, 1837, during a fire that took with it a total of nineteen buildings along the waterfront and Water Street. (6) In its place today are the Stonington Ocean Bank building on Cannon Square, built in 1851, and the Gilbert William Collins house, built in 1853 (Pl. XIV). Gilbert Collins and his brother Daniel (1813-1862), with Mark Glines (1811-1895), ran a mill at the east end of Wall Street, where they made doors and window-sash frames still found in local houses. The bank was built in the Greek revival style favored by its president at the time, Charles Phelps Williams. Although it was acquired by the Stonington Historical Society in 1942, it is still a bank.

Edward Denison's sister Mary (1742-1800) married on April 5, 1759, Colonel Oliver Smith of nearby Groton, a merchant in the West Indies trade known for his role in the Revolutionary War. According to family tradition, soon after the couple moved to Long Point in 1761, they built a house just south of Wall Street, probably on land Mary Denison had inherited from her brother. The house (Pl. III) must have been moved to its present site north of Wall Street after March 15, 1812, when Nathaniel Miner Pendleton (1777-1848) sold the lot to David C. Smith (1782- 1883), a grandson of Oliver. (7)

Among the others who purchased waterfront lots on Long Point from Elihu Chesebrough Jr. were Edward Hancox (1714-1803), Isaac Sheffield (1731-1797), and John Brown (1701-1764). Chesebrough also sold land north of the town square on both sides of Main Street to a number of tradesmen: Nathaniel Tripp, a shipwright; Eliphalet Buddington, a cooper; Simeon Hiscox, a tailor; Nathan Stanton and Thomas Robinson, mariners; and Gilbert Fanning, a merchant. The two houses built by Fanning after 1761 still stand on the west side of Main Street between Union and Hannony Streets. Fanning's son Edmund (1769-1841), who was born at 44 Main Street, became the first American sea captain to circumnavigate the globe, in 1797 and 1798, aboard the Betsey, a New York ship with a crew from Stonington. His brother Nathaniel (1755-1805) sailed with John Paul Jones (1747-1792) during the Revolutionary War and became first borough clerk when he returned to Stonington. The land records of the Fanning houses show the uncertainty of the eco nomic life of a merchant. Gilbert Fanning no sooner had bought the land than economic circumstances forced him to deed it to his father-in-law, Dr. Nathan B. Palmer (1712-1795), and it was not until the end of the eighteenth century that Fanning's sons were able to regain title to their homestead.