Ephraim Hawley House - Trumbull, Connecticut

The Ephraim Hawley House is the oldest Hawley homestead that I have ever visited. On a recent visit to the home in July 2010, I was excited to be able to see the house after many years of reading about it and seeing photos online. The house is located in Trumbull, Connecticut, and is privately owned. The current owner of the house recently emailed me more information on the history of the house. His family has lived there since 1965, just a small part of the long and extensive history of this lovely home.

The following text was provided by the current owner of the house, T. Pieragostini, through Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephraim_Hawley_House
Photos taken by me in July 2010.

The House
The Ephraim Hawley House, located in New England, is a Colonial American wooden post-and-beam timber-frame farm house built between 1670 and 1690.It is situated on the Farm Highway, or Route 108, on the south side of Mischa Hill in the village of Nichols in Trumbull, Connecticut. The house is unique, besides being considered the oldest house in Trumbull, it has been located in four different townships in its history, but has never moved; Stratford (1670–1725), Unity (1725–1744), North Stratford (1744–1797) and Trumbull (1797–present).

The Land
The land grant in the Stratford land records described as "ye springs and white plains" was originally granted to Captain Joseph Hawley. The land was 1/4 mile wide by 1 mile long or 172 acres +/-. The house was built near the springs which are located directly behind the Ephraim Hawley house and the Curtiss house next door to it. The property ran all the way to the Pequonnock River or white plains area to the west, in 1671, including the present location of the Daniel Hawley home.

Research
Joan Oppenheim completed a report on the house while at Yale University. She concluded, after examining the structure, researching land records, probate records and the Hawley record, that the house was built between 1683 and 1690 by Farmer Ephraim Hawley who married Sarah Welles, granddaughter of Connecticut Colony Governor Thomas Welles in 1683. The date of construction 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 at the time, and information from the Hawley Record which stated that Ephraim resided in New Stratford/Trumbull. Oppenheim also stated the dating of the house compared with that of S.S. on file at the School of Fine Arts at Yale. The house was dated to 1671-1683 in the 2002 Historic and Architectural Resource Survey produced for the Connecticut Historical Commission by Geoffrey Rossano, PhD. The 2010 Historic and Architectural Survey of the Town of Trumbull, Connecticut produced by Heather C. Jones and Bruce G. Harvey PhD for the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism, dates the house to 1670-1683. A piece of oak framing was carbon dated to 1710 with a standard deviation of 30 years.


The structure
-The The house began 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 four rooms downstairs, a small entryway, parlour, dining room and kitchen. The second story was one undivided sleeping loft. Because of its small initial size, the house was expanded several times. For more information on the structure visit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephraim_Hawley_House



Ephraim Hawley
Ephraim, son of Joseph Hawley, was elected fence viewer in January 1687. He was propounded as a freeman (Colonial) to the court of the Connecticut Colony at Hartford in May 1687 with his brother Captain John Hawley. To be elected a freeman in the Connecticut Colony at this time, one had to own real property, a dwelling house, in his name. Ephraim died on April 18, 1690. Local legend is that he and his horse were killed by lightning, and since no grave has ever been found and the inventory of his estate did not include a horse, this may be true. Fairfield County raised an army on April 11, 1690 to defend Albany, New York following the Schenectady Massacre during the King William's War. Hawley may have died during the trip there, from fighting or disease (small pox). His peer who served in the war, Lt. John Hubbell, died on May 1, 1690 at Wood Creek (Fort Ann) in New York and was buried at the spot where he died. Lt. Agur Tomlinson, Ensign of the army raised in Fairfield County, would later marry Ephraim Hawley's widow Sara Welles in 1692. The house lands and meadow were appraised at 352 pound (currency) by the Fairfield County Probate Court. Since Ephraim died intestate, without a will, and according to English Law at the time, title to the dwelling house passed to the oldest living male heir, his half brother Robert (Hawley) Haule. Sara's dowry was returned to her out of her eldest son Daniel's double portion of lands, which were sold, and she received all of the movable estate or personal property.

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.The highway was 12 rods wide, or 198 feet, where Broadbridge Brook runs off the south side of Mischa Hill, at Zachariah Curtiss, his land, and at Captain's Farm (The identity of the Captain has bewildered historians since Reverend Orcutt suggested in 1886 that he was the first to have farmed in Trumbull. Orcutt presumed the farm may have been abandoned when individuals left the area to settle Woodbury in the 1670s. The Captain could have been Captain Joseph Hawley or his brother, Captain John Hawley or even Captain William Curtiss, who owned a farm nearby). 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. 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 Road Route 1 (1673).

Later Occupants of the House
The house may have been abandoned after Ephraim died in 1690 as Sarah may have lived with her family in Wethersfield until marrying Tomlinson in Derby in 1692. Robert (Hawley) Haule (Ephraim's half brother) was a freeman in Massachusetts and took ownership of the dwelling house through probate court. Robert may have died shortly after his brother Ephraim and could be buried in the Stratfield Pequonock Burial Ground under the stone marked RH 1696 or RH. There is no documentation to prove who, if anyone, lived in the house from 1690 until February 1721 when Ephraim's brother Captain John Hawley is listed as the owner of the house.

In 1787, Eliakim, son of Captain Robert and Hannah, married his first cousin Sally Sara Hawley, great granddaughter of Captain John Hawley through Ephraim and Nathan, and received the new dwelling house as a gift from his father for love and good will. Sally Sara Hawley lived in the house for 60 years until her death in 1847 and was the last Hawley to live in the house.

The house today
Over the last 324 years, the appearance of the house has evolved 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 to include; dirt cellar, post and beam frame, chimney with beehive oven, quarter-sawn flooring, plaster walls and ceilings, window frames and the original riven oak clapboard siding. The house may be one of only four First Period homes still standing in New England that retain their original riven oak clapboard siding in place.