On Chapel Street, in New Haven, Connecticut, opposite the Old Campus: from the time of glaciation, cultivated by the Quinnipiac; in 1614, charted by a Dutch explorer; in 1638, colonized by the Puritans; throughout the American Revolution, home of the signer, Roger Sherman, his second wife Rebecca Prescott-Sherman, their fifteen children, and the family store; in 1860, industrialist Gaius Fenn Warner's Italianate villa, by Henry Austin; in 1880, Marshal Peter R. Carll's Opera House; in 1884, the Republican League; in 1887, the Hyperion; in 1903, the Union League addition, by Richard Williams; in 1926, the Roger Sherman Theater; beginning in 1976, a tradition of French fine dining, that continues today. While the Roger Sherman house is no longer standing, it holds up all right.
"Of all the distinguished guests with whose names tavern traditions are proudly linked, Washington is of course the most eminent. The tavern that can boast of having given him shelter for a night has ten times the chance of preservation accorded the ordinary old building. Here we trace carefully the hostelries honoured by the President's… Continue reading President George Washington dropped in for tea
"Both the original Nine Squares plan and the subdivision were designed with a clear, fixed plan in mind. But it took over sixty years to fully recognize the plan they laid out in 1784. Visitors to the city near 1800 could still remark that only 'most' of the squares were divided by cross streets. High… Continue reading Roger Sherman swapped land with a neighbor
"The land has been in residential use for most of its recorded history. As early as 1641, a 'house, barn, home lot and orchard' belonged to Richard Platt."
"When, in 1761, Roger Sherman moved to New Haven, he found himself in what served as a metropolis for the colony, insofar as its fifteen hundred or so shopkeepers, artisans, and farmers could enable it to do so. Sitting quietly by the sea, the little port was outside the main currents of commerce and politics of the British Empire. She trafficked a little with Boston, New York, and the West Indies, but hardly any with England."
"Taken by his Great, Great Grand Son, Roger Sherman Baldwin, February 1855. General Washington once took tea in the West Front Room of this house. The Bay Window on the East side has been built but a few years."-Excerpt and (top) image courtesy of The Whitney Library and New Haven Museum, photograph by Roger Sherman… Continue reading The Roger Sherman House, Chapel Street No. 1050
"Late eighteenth-century newspaper ads in New Haven advertised that stores would accept a variety of non-currency items for payment; Roger Sherman’s store, for example, accepted as payment: 'Wheat, Rye, Corn, Oats, white Beans, Flax-Seed, Butter, Cheese, Pork, Beef, Flour, Hoops, Staves, Heading, Boards, Plank, Hay, Wood, Geese Feathers, Tow-Cloth, Check, Flannel, and all kinds of… Continue reading Roger Sherman’s store accepted non-currency for payment
"In the Morris house in East Haven are a chest of drawers hit by a British cannonball in 1779, and the missile itself; a painting of Amos Morris, and the chair on which he sat for the painting." -Image courtesy of the New York Times, Times Machines, "War-Scarred Relics of the Revolution," by Frances Phipps,… Continue reading New Haven during the War of the Revolution, July 5, 1779
-Image courtesy of the Internet Archive, The Library of Congress, "The homes of our forefathers. Being a selection of the oldest and most interesting buildings, historical houses, and noted places in Rhode Island and Connecticut," by Edwin Whitefield, 1882 "The house was completed in 1770, in which year Mr. Sherman moved into it. Within its… Continue reading Roger Sherman completed building his house.
"As a preeminent portraitist of the early republic, Earl provides some of the most memorable images of the turbulent era. His portrait of Roger Sherman is considered his masterpiece. It commemorates Sherman's service as a member of the First Continental Congress, from which he had just returned. Sherman sits in an austere interior on a… Continue reading Portrait of Roger Sherman, by Ralph Earl
“Roger Sherman exhibits the oddest shaped character I ever remember to have met with. He is awkward, un-meaning, and unaccountably strange in his manner. But in his train of thinking there is something regular, deep and comprehensive; yet the oddity of his address, the vulgarisms that accompany his public speaking, and that strange New England cant which runs through his public as well as his private speaking make everything that is connected with him grotesque and laughable;–and yet he deserves infinite praise,–no Man has a better Heart or a clearer Head."