Ephraim Hawley House
The Ephraim Hawley House is a historic Colonial American wooden post-and-beam saltbox house constructed in 1683. It is situated on the east side of the Farm Highway or present day Nichols Avenue (Route 108) in the Nichols section of the town of Trumbull, Connecticut in New England. Built as a rural farm house, it is considered by some to be the oldest extant structure in Nichols and is a private residence. The house, built by Ephraim Hawley (1659-1690) on land that his father Captain Joseph Hawley (1603-1690) was granted in 1673, is an example of American colonial architecture from the 1680s.
Research
Joan Oppenheim completed a research report on the house while at Yale University in the 1950s. She concluded, after examining the structure, researching land records, probate records and the Hawley family record, that it was Ephraim Hawley who built the house in 1683. Oppenheim concluded that Hawley may have built the house for his bride Sarah Welles, granddaughter of Connecticut Colony Governor Thomas Welles in 1683. The date of erection 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, 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 Building
- The original structure, a simple one and one half story Cape Cod style house, has a massive central stone chimney. The house is built entirely of oak that started growing in the late 1500s. A lean-to addition with a long steep pitched roof was added onto the rear of the house preserving the original riven oak clapboard siding in the attic that was created and turned the house into a saltbox early in the 18th century. The front roof was raised to a full two stories and the house turned into a two family residence in the late 19th century by American Indian Truman Bradley circa (1820-1890), a.k.a. Truman Mauwee. Bradley, who may have lived in the house as early as 1840, was a direct descendant of Gideon Mauwee the first Schaghticoke (tribe) Sachem and is believed to be related to William Sherman Chief of the Golden Hill Paugussett Indian Nation who also lived in Nichols at the Golden Hill Reservation in the 19th century. [1].
- The house is situated on the south side of Mischa Hill in the southeastern part of Trumbull in the area first called Old Farm's in the early 1690s. The oak post-and-beam frame is comprised of 8" by 10" girts, 8" by 8" plates and 8" by 10" splayed posts. The rafters are 8" by 8" and the floor joist are 6" by 6" spaced 20" apart. The flooring is vertically sawn 1" thick oak boards with random widths of between 12" to 16" 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 flat rose headed nails. The house is built on the ground with a small partial dirt cellar on the south side of the house. The 8' stone chimney is laid up with clay. A brick beehive bake oven is located on the right hand side of the back wall of the kitchen fireplace and its small opening is spanned by a wrought iron lintel. The fireplace is 4' 6" in height and 8' in width and is spanned by the original 10" by 10" oak lintel. The side walls of the firebox are roughly dressed granite blocks. The ceilings and walls still retain the original clamshell plaster applied on riven oak lath.
Farm Highway
On December 7, 1696, the Farm Highway or present-day Nichols Avenue Connecticut Route 108 in Trumbull was designated as a highway by the selectmen and said to have been completed as far as the brook runs off of the south side of Mischa Hill. The brook, later named Broadbridge Brook, begins west of the present day intersection of Unity Road and Huntington Turnpike in Nichols Center and flows south to Broadbridge Road. In 1696, the highway was 198' wide at Mischa Hill and at Zachariah Curtiss his land and at Captain's Farm. Nichols Avenue Route 108 is considered by some to be the third oldest documented road in Connecticut after the Mohegan Road Connecticut Route 32 in Norwich (1670) and the Post Road Route 1 (1673) [2].
The Hawley Family
- Abiah Hawley, Ephraim and Sarah Hawley's 17 year old daughter who was born in the house, married 30 year old William Wolcott of East Windsor, Connecticut in 1707. Their son William married Abigail Abbot and produced a daughter named Abigail Wolcott who married Oliver Ellsworth in 1772. Ellsworth was the third Chief Justice of the United States (1796-1800) appointed 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 be the first to use the term United States. 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).
- Gideon Hawley, Ephraim's grandson, graduated from Yale University in 1749 and worked under Jonathan Edwards and became a missionary to the Iroquois Indians.
- Captain David Hawley, Ephraim's great grandson, fought in the American Revolutionary War. In 1776, Captain Hawley served under Benedict Arnold at the Battle of Valcour Island in the Great Lakes region. 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, CT home by the British in May of 1779.
- Captain Robert Hawley, Ephraim's grand nephew, inherited the house and gave it to his son Eliakim in 1787 after he married. Robert 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 Hawley's; Abraham, Nathan and Nero. Nero Hawley was a slave owned by the Hawley family who won his freedom after fighting in the American Revolution [3].
The House Today
Over the last 324 years the appearance of the house has changed 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 including; the root cellar, post & beam frame, 8' chimney with beehive oven, 16" wide oak flooring, plaster walls and ceilings, oak window frames and the original riven oak clapboards. The house is one of maybe six known First Period houses in New England that retain their original riven oak clapboard siding.
External links
Ephraim Hawley House Archiplanet [4]
References
- Frederick Haines Curtiss, A Genealogy of the Curtiss Family, 1903
- Elias Hawley, Hawley Record, 1890
- Rev. 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