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Community Corner

Historic Queen of the Green Nears Third Century Mark

For nearly 300 years, the Gideon Potter home has stood flanking the Green on Hemingway Avenue, making it the oldest home left in East Haven.

 

The Potter family of East Haven has been gone for a long time. Though very prominent in the first two centuries of the town, few were still around at the beginning of the 20th century.

However, they did leave one thing behind that has been a great asset to the community. They left the Gideon Potter House at 274 Hemingway Avenue; a grand old home that has stood facing the East Haven Green for almost 300 years.  It has sheltered so many different individuals, and has been used for so many different purposes, that it seems to have a personality and a life of its own.

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Today the Potter House has vinyl siding over its clapboard, but the bones of the Colonial home show through. Its architecture is remarkable enough that it was one the main reasons the area around the Old Green was named to the National Register of Historic Places. It was built in 1717, and is the oldest remaining home in town.

But what of the family who built it? John Potter and his wife and children, along with his mother and her second family, landed in Boston on the Hector with Rev. John Davenport and Theophilus Eaton, the Puritan leaders.

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There, John’s family met up with his brother, William, who was already in Boston. They thought that was the end of the journey and had begun some mercantile dealings in the town. When Davenport and Eaton decided they didn’t like the flavor of religion being practiced in Boston, the Potters decided to move on with their leaders since they'd been promised land to farm.

The Potters were literally on the first boat to land in the New Haven Colony when Davenport and Eaton packed up their flock and sailed west to settle some fertile land that had been explored by Massachusetts soldiers when they attacked the local Pequot Indians.

The ship sailed into New Haven harbor in April, 1639. The Potters signed the colony’s founding covenant and were given a small section of land (see 1641 map in photo gallery.) The three Potter households lived near the harbor.

John Potter didn’t enjoy the new country for very long. He died in 1643; four years after immigrating. Left alone in a strange place with a young family to raise, his widow, Elizabeth, scandalized the young colony by making a connection with one Edward Parker, who did not meet the approval of the church elders. Expelled from the church, she married him anyway when she was 40 years old.

Various records show that they continued to live and thrive in the town. After Parker died, she would marry yet again, to Robert Rose of Branford, at age 58. The lady may have lived with the Puritans, but she clearly had her own ideas about how it should be done. She died at the advanced age of 71.

Her son, John Potter Jr, was apprenticed as a blacksmith, so he was in high demand as a settler. He married in 1661 and moved out of New Haven to Branford. But the settlers of East Haven weren’t about to take that as final. In 1662, he was enticed to settle in East Haven and helped to buy property beside the Green, where he set up shop.

His grandson was Gideon Potter, born in 1700, and his son, Gideon Junior, followed. Between them, their occupancy gave rise to the name of the house, which has stuck through all the succeeding generations.

Gideon’s grandson, Isaac, would die in the hold of a British prison ship during the Revolutionary War. And, eventually, it would be Gideon's granddaughter, Lois Smith, who would inherit the house.

Smith’s descendants would own the house until 1866, when it was sold for the first time in 150 years to outsiders. It then changed hands many times until 1900 when it was purchased by George Kirkham, who had the Chidsey brothers remodel it as a two-family residence.

One of the families who rented from him apparently ran an ice-cream and penny-candy store in what had been the front parlor during the 1920s. Two owners later, it was purchased by George and Mary Monroe. She turned it into a private convalescent home from 1922 until 1942 when the bank foreclosed on it. In 1946, Janet and Frank McDonald found a life-long project in the home.

McDonald owned the Volkswagen dealership on Route 1 near the present day Xpect Discount Store. He and his wife would spend 40 years peeling away paint, dirt and additions in order to restore the house to its Colonial origins.

By 1986, the McDonalds had to give up on their historic treasure due to advancing age and a desire to retire to a warmer climate. They sold their home to Camilla and Donald Franco, who wanted to install their corporate headquarters there. The family is still in East Haven, and owns the Talmadge Park Rehabilitation and Nursing Center on Talmadge Avenue.

“The Francos had me come in to do some architectural restoration,” said Frank Chapman, a local architect. “I was amazed when I saw the basement. It was like the laws of gravity hadn’t existed for the past 250 years. The floor above my head was made up of beams that had been fitted by hand to make a nine-square pattern. And, there were no nails. These giant beams had been hand-notched and joined together. I couldn’t believe it.”

Chapman’s company put in some concrete and steel beams to help reinforce the floors, but didn’t touch the exterior.

“I love working with older homes and I would never make any substantial changes to a place that old,” Chapman said.

The Franco tenure was short though, and three years later the house was sold again to a property management company. And shortly after that, a large, modern office annex was attached to the rear of the building. While the annex can’t be seen if facing the house from the street, it is visible from the sides, as is the large parking lot in the rear.

Recently, the house and its annex was sold to Leonard Fasano, the state senator for East Haven. This time, it has found an owner who appreciates its history and architecture.

“I bought the house because I love the floors, the old fireplace and the lovely view of the Green outside the front windows,”Fasano said. He also said he will be announcing plans for the house in the next few weeks. He hastened to add that he would never change such a historic interior.

“My law office in New Haven, on Orange Street, was built in 1887,” Fasano said. “I love the look of the old woods and I’ve done some restoration work on the inside. It has some of the same flavor as the Potter House, although it’s not nearly as old.”

Undoubtedly, Gideon Potter would be pleased that his home has found another owner who appreciates what his family built – a home that has survived everything from the Revolutionary War and East Haven’s independence from New Haven to Industrialization and urban renewal.

As it glides gracefully into the 21st century, Gideon Potter’s house still looks out over the Old Green, a testament to the coming of John Potter and his blacksmith’s anvil.

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