History in houses: the Butler-McCook house and garden in Hartford, Connecticut

Magazine Antiques, August, 2002 by Beverly Johnson Lucas

(14.) Existing brick houses that once stood on Main Street include: the 1788 Amos Bull House, (see n. 2); the Henry Barnard House (1807), a Georgian house with a Greek revival entrance portico, at 118 Main Street; and the Ellery Hills House (c. 1842), a Greek revival house with an unusual elliptical portico at 214 Main Street Photographs in the collection of the Antiquarian and Landmarks Society and the Connecticut Historical Society, Hartford, show other brick residences on Main Street, built in the 1820s and 1840s, which no longer survive.

(15.) Eliza Royse Sheldon Butler to Mary Sheldon, February 1837 (Butler-McCook family papers).

(16.) lbid., January 18, 1837.

(17.) John Butler will, dated October 19, 1846 and proved March 9, 1847. John Butler's inventory, dated April 3, 1847, valued his estate, both business and personal, at $104,153.01 (Butler-McCook family papers).

(18.) Several sources in the Butler-McCook family papers document the European tour, including Mary L. Sheldon's travel journals, Eliza Sheldon Butler's sketchbooks, and family letters.

(19.) See William Hosley, Colt: The Making of an American Legend (University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst, in association with the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut, 1996).

(20.) Alexopoulos, The Nineteenth Century Parks of Hanford: A Legacy of the Nation (Hartford Architecture Conservancy, Hartford, 1983).

(21.) Mary M. Alves and Rudy J. Favretti, "An Oasis on Main Street: The Landscape History of the Butler-McCook Homestead," Connecticut Antiquarian, vol. 36, no. 1 (June 1984), pp. 13-29.

(22.) "Belknap Thievery, 1876-1878" papers (Butler-McCook family papers). McCook noted that J. Belknap, the guardian and caretaker of Eliza Butler McCook's property for approximately twenty years, appropriated about $7,000 in bonds of her money and $3,000 of her half-sister, Mary Sheldon's money, also in bonds, while the family was in Europe.

(23.) John James McCook papers (Butler-McCook family papers) include diaries, charts, maps, addresses, lectures, published articles, correspondence, and photographs. See also The Social Reform Papers of John James McCook: A Guide to the Microfilm Publication, ed. Adela Haberski French (Antiquarian and Landmarks Society of Connecticut, Hartford, 1977); and David T Courtwright and Shelby Miller, "Progressivism and Drink: The Social and Photographic Investigations of John James McCook," Connecticut Antiquarian, vol. 37, no, 2 (December 1985) and vol 38, no. 1 (Summer 1986).

(24.) Photographs at the Connecticut Historical Society show several eighteenth-century houses on Main Street that were converted to businesses. Also in the second half of the nineteenth century, apartment houses and residential hotels, such as the McKone Building(1875), Hotel Capitol (1875), and the Linden (1891), were built across the street from the Butler-McCook House. At the same time, several insurance companies and major department stores erected buildings on Main Street, although many have not survived.