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.
"The great majority of photographs in this book are from the collection of the New Haven Colony Historical Society. But in order to give broader scope to this visual document of life in early Connecticut, other sources were used as well. These include the collection of Mrs. Edith LaFrancis (for all the striking photographs taken by George and Alvah Howes), the Sterling Memorial Library, Yale University (for selected scenes of life at early Yale)..."
Kilfeather was a native of Fair Haven. He learned the cigar manufacturing business at an early age and when 18 started his own business. At that time he was the youngest cigar manufacturer in the east. This is the public record of John P. Kilfeather, knight of St. Patrick, battler of organized labor, who named his signature New Haven-made cigar the Hyperion.