The Ephraim Hawley House is a privately owned Colonial American wooden post-and-beamtimber-framesaltbox house situated on the Farm Highway, Route 108, on the south side of Mischa Hill, in Nichols, a village located within the town of Trumbull, Connecticut, the U.S.[1] It was expanded to its present shape by three additions.[2][3][4] Over time, the location of the house has been identified in four different named townships, as jurisdictional boundaries changed, but it has never been moved. These towns were Stratford (1670–1725), Unity (1725–1744), North Stratford (1744–1797), and Trumbull (1797–present).
The Hawley Homestead was dated to 1690 during the Works Progress AdministrationFederal Writers' Project conducted during the Great Depression. Joan Oppenheim created a research report on the house while studying at the Yale School of Fine Arts in the 1930s. She concluded after examining the structure and researching land records, probate records and The Hawley Record (1890), that the house was built between 1683 and 1690 by farmer Ephraim Hawley.[5][6] In 1683 he had married Sarah Welles, daughter of Colonel Samuel and Elizabeth (Hollister) Welles, and granddaughter of Connecticut ColonyGovernorThomas Welles.[5][6]
The date of construction was based not only upon architectural details of the house, but also upon comparisons with other homes of the period, and facts given to Oppenheim by the Curtiss family, who owned the house at the time. The Hawley Record (1890), stated that Ephraim had resided in Trumbull.[7][8] Oppenheim said that the dating of the house compared with that of S.S., on file at the School of Fine Arts at Yale.
When the Trumbull Historical Society organized in 1964, they dated the house to between 1683 and 1690. The house was dated to 1671–1683 in the Historic and Architectural Resource Survey (2002) produced for the Connecticut Historical Commission by Geoffrey Rossano, PhD. The Historic and Architectural Survey of the Town of Trumbull, Connecticut (2010), produced by Heather C. Jones and Bruce G. Harvey PhD for the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism, dates the house to 1670–1683.
Structure
Image before 1881Image 2011
Began as a Cape Cod cottage
The house was built 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 three rooms on the first floor; a parlor, dining room and kitchen. The second floor was an undivided loft.
Oak frame and siding
The white oakpost-and-beam frame has eight by ten inch girts, eight by eight inch plates, and eight by ten inch splayed posts. The common rafters are eight by eight inches and taper to six by six inches at the ridge; they have six by six inch chamferedcollar beams.[citation needed]
The floor joist are six by six inches and are twenty inches apart. The six inch by ten inch summer beams, or tie beams are parallel to the façade, dovetailed into the girts and concealed within the plasterceiling.
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 oak boards that were not suitable to be used as flooring. The mortise-and-tenon joints are held by wooden pins, and the flooring is nailed with large hand-wrought iron nails (see image).
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 (see images).[9]
Stone chimney
The first floor of the house is at ground level. There is a partial dirt cellar located on the south side of the house. The eight-foot-wide stone fireplace has three flues with clay mortar. The kitchen hearth is nine feet six inches wide by five feet seven inches deep. There is a one-foot crawl space around the chimney foundation below the first floor and a fieldstone foundation.
A forty-inch deep brick beehive oven is built into the right rear wall of the kitchen fireplace and its opening has a wrought iron lintel. The brick are seven and one-half inches long by three and one-half inches wide by two inches thick. In October 1685, because a variety of sizes of brick were being used, the Colony of Connecticut ordered that all future brick be nine inches long by four and one-half inches wide by two and one-half inches thick.[10]
There is a small tinder box in 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 blocks. 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 dripstones in the front and back.
Interior finish
The original stairs were parallel to the front wall of the house and situated behind the wall separating the parlor and the kitchen. There is poplar paneling alternating in width of thirteen inches and fifteen inches. The ceilings and walls are plaster, made up of calcined oyster shells with red cattle hair. The plaster was applied on riven oak lath attached with small hand wrought iron nails.[11] McKee [12] writes about a Massachusetts contract dating to 1675 that specified the plasterer, “Is to lath and siele (seal)[13] the four rooms of the house betwixt (between) the joists overhead with a coat of lime and hair upon the clay; also to fill the gable ends of the house with ricks (bricks) and plaster them with clay. To lath and plaster partitions of the house with clay and lime, and to fill, lath, and plaster them with lime and hair besides; and to siele and lath them overhead with lime; also to fill, lath, and plaster the kitchen up to the wall plate on every side. The said Daniel Andrews is to find lime, bricks, clay, stone, hair, together with laborers and workmen… .”[14] Records of the New Haven colony mention rates for plaster and lath as early as 1641.
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. 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 1840. 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 with the studs forming their jambs. 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.
Additions
The first lean-to was built shortly after the main house was completed and is used as a buttery (room) or pantry. The exterior walls are solid 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 second lean-to addition was added before 1881, when stairs were installed in front of the kitchen fireplace, the front roof was raised to a full two-stories in height, and the second floor was partitioned into five rooms, turning the house into a two-family residence. The original hand-riven oak clapboard exterior siding and original rafter feet are preserved in the lean-to attics.
In 1787, Captain Robert Hawley gifted the house to his son Eliakim when he married his second cousin Sally Sara Hawley.[15] Sally Sara Hawley lived in the house for 60 years until her death in 1847.
Truman Bradley
In April 1881, Truman Mauwee (Schaghticoke), also known as Truman Bradley, bought the house from Charles Nichols Fairchild for $450 ($100 in cash and a $350 mortgage to Fairchild). He completed the second floor Colonial Revival renovations.[16] In October 1882, Bradley sold the house to his neighbor Clarissa Curtis for $525 ($175 cash, and Curtiss assumed the $350 mortgage to Fairchild).[17]
Original end rafter configuration
Farm Highway
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.[18] The highway was 12 rods wide, or 198 feet, where Broadbridge Brook runs off the south side of Mischa Hill, at the Zachariah Curtiss house, 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.[19] 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 RoadRoute 1 (1673).[20]
1964 house tour
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. 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.
The house today
Over the last few centuries, the appearance of the house has evolved as each family has left their mark while expanding, adapting or preserving 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, calcined oyster shell lime plaster walls and ceilings over riven oak lath, poplar paneling, oak batten doors, oak window frames and the original riven oak clapboard siding preserved in the lean-to attic.
↑ Geoffrey Rossano PhD, Historic and Architectural Resource Survey of Trumbull, Connecticut, produced for the Connecticut Historical Commission, Hartford, CT, 2002
↑ Heather Jones and Bruce Harvey, PhD, S&ME, Inc., Historic and Architectural Survey of the Town of Trumbull, Fairfield County, Connecticut, Produced for the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism, Hartford, CT, 2010
1 2 New England Families Genealogical and Memorial, William Cutter, 1914, Vol. 1 page 275
1 2 Lineage Book of Hereditary Order of Descendants of Colonial Governors (Google eBook), Robert Glenn Thurtle, Genealogical Publishing Com, 2009
↑ Magna Charta, John S. Wurts, Brookfield Publishing Company, 1945, p. 1995
↑ Early Domestic Architecture of Connecticut, J. Frederick Kelly, Dover Publications, 1963, page 81
↑ Colonial Records of Connecticut Vol. 3, page 192
↑ Weaver, Martin E. (1997). Conserving Buildings, A Manual of Techniques and Materials, Revised Edition. New York: Preservation Press. p.149. ISBN978-0-471-50944-8.
Plaster is a building material used for the protective or decorative coating of walls and ceilings and for moulding and casting decorative elements. In English, "plaster" usually means a material used for the interiors of buildings, while "render" commonly refers to external applications. The term stucco refers to plasterwork that is worked in some way to produce relief decoration, rather than flat surfaces.
Lath and plaster is a building process used to finish mainly interior dividing walls and ceilings. It consists of narrow strips of wood (laths) which are nailed horizontally across the wall studs or ceiling joists and then coated in plaster. The technique derives from an earlier, more primitive process called wattle and daub.
A lath or slat is a thin, narrow strip of straight-grained wood used under roof shingles or tiles, on lath and plaster walls and ceilings to hold plaster, and in lattice and trellis work.
A saltbox house is a gable-roofed residential structure that is typically two stories in the front and one in the rear. It is a traditional New England style of home, originally timber framed, which takes its name from its resemblance to a wooden lidded box in which salt was once kept.
Plasterwork is construction or ornamentation done with plaster, such as a layer of plaster on an interior or exterior wall structure, or plaster decorative moldings on ceilings or walls. This is also sometimes called pargeting. The process of creating plasterwork, called plastering or rendering, has been used in building construction for centuries. For the art history of three-dimensional plaster, see stucco.
A plasterer is a tradesman who works with plaster, such as forming a layer of plaster on an interior wall or plaster decorative moldings on ceilings or walls. The process of creating plasterwork, called plastering, has been used in building construction for centuries. A plasterer is someone who does a full 4 or 2 years apprenticeship to be fully qualified.
Nero Hawley was an African-American soldier who was born into slavery in North Stratford, Connecticut, and later earned his freedom after enlisting in the Continental Army in place of his owner, Daniel Hawley, on April 20, 1777, during the American Revolution. His life is featured in the 1976 book From Valley Forge to Freedom, which also notes other areas of present-day Trumbull, Connecticut associated with Hawley.
David Hawley (1741–1807) was a captain in the Continental Navy and a privateer during the American Revolutionary War. He commanded Royal Savage in the 1776 Battle of Valcour Island, which is generally regarded as one of the first naval battles of the American Revolutionary War, and one of the first fought by the United States Navy.
Nichols, a historic village in southeastern Trumbull in Fairfield County, Connecticut, is named after the family who maintained a large farm in its center for almost 300 years. The Nichols Farms Historic District, which encompasses part of the village, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Originally home to the Golden Hill Paugussett Indian Nation, the area was colonized by the English during the Great Migration of the 1630s as a part of the coastal settlement of Stratford. The construction of the Merritt Parkway through the village, and the subsequent closing of stores and factories, turned the village into a bedroom community in 1939. Aviation pioneer Igor Sikorsky lived in three separate homes in Nichols during his active years between 1928 and 1951, when he designed, built and flew fixed-wing aircraft and put the helicopter into mass production for the first time.
Route 108 in the U.S. state of Connecticut, locally called Nichols Avenue and Huntington Turnpike, is a two-lane state highway that runs northerly from US 1, Boston Post Road in Stratford, through Trumbull, to Route 110 in downtown Shelton. Originally called the Farm Highway, it was laid out to the south side of Mischa Hill in Trumbull on December 7, 1696 and is considered to be the third oldest documented highway in Connecticut after the Mohegan Road in Norwich (1670) and the Boston Post Road or US 1 (1673).
Robert Hawley (1729–1799), Captain, raised provisions for the Continental Army soldiers and fought in the American Revolutionary War.
Nichols Farms is a historic area within the town of Trumbull, Connecticut. The Nichols Farms Historic District, which encompasses part of the area, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Truman Bradley or Truman Mauwee was a Schaghticoke Native American who lived in the village of Nichols in Trumbull, Connecticut.
Joseph Hawley (1603–1690), may have been born in Parwich, Derbyshire, England, was the first of the Hawley name to come to America in 1629. He settled at Stratford, Connecticut, by 1650, becoming the town's first town clerk or record keeper, tavern (ordinary) keeper and a shipbuilder.
The Thomas Hawley House at 514 Purdy Hill Road in Monroe, Connecticut, is a historic Colonial American wooden post-and-beam saltbox farm house built in 1730. Hawley was the great grandson of Joseph Hawley (Captain) of Stratford, Connecticut, through Samuel. A drawing and description of the house was included in J. Frederick Kelly's book, The Early Domestic Architecture of Connecticut first published in 1924.
Trumbull, a town in Fairfield County, Connecticut, in the New England region of the United States, was originally home to the Golden Hill Paugussett Indian Nation, and was colonized by the English during the Great Migration of the 1630s as a part of the coastal settlement of Stratford.
The Zachariah Curtiss House is located at 2950 Nichols Avenue on the east side of the Farm Highway or Route 108 on the south side of Mischa Hill, in the village of Nichols in Trumbull, Connecticut in New England. The house was built by Zachariah II between 1721 and 1746 in the Georgian architectural style. The Colonial American wooden post-and-beam timber frame farm house has a one and one-half story ell added in 1800. The house has the distinction of being located in four different townships in its history, but has never been moved; Stratford (1686–1725), Unity (1725–1744), North Stratford (1744–1797) and Trumbull (1797-present). It is currently in a dilapidated state awaiting demolition.
James Beebe (1717–1785), Reverend, presided over the Unity Parish at North Stratford, now Trumbull, Connecticut, between 1747 and 1785. He was an Army Preacher in the French and Indian War and a patriot.
Lime-ash floors were an economic form of floor construction from the 15th century to the 19th century, for upper floors in parts of England where limestone or chalk were easily available. They were strong, flexible, and offered good heat and sound insulation.
Lenhart Farmhouse is a historic farmhouse in Root Township, Adams County, Indiana. It was built about 1848, and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2002.
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