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News & Events
Hale House
On December 10, 2006, our Congregation voted overwhelmingly
to purchase the Hale House property immediately to the south of our church. This
was an opportunity to create a unique legacy that would most likely never be
available again.
The Property Planning Committee, headed by Sarah
Moriarty and including David Taylor, ex officio, is
currently investigating alternative uses for the entire
property to serve the mission and needs of First
Church. Indeed, this process should be very exciting as
we explore and consider the multitude of possibilities
to extend and broaden our mission: "to serve as a beacon
of light on Glastonbury’s Main Street" – an opportunity
to invest in the legacy as others have done before us.
The Thomas Hale House may be
one of the oldest central-chimney colonial houses in Glastonbury. Thomas, who
was licensed as a tavern keeper in 1715, was a founder of the town and one of
the petitioners for separation from Wethersfield in 1690. From his house in 1757
Daniel Hale, grandson of Thomas, rode horseback with the 6th Regiment’s Troop of
Horse to the besieged Fort William Henry near Albany in the French and Indian
War, and later he marched to Boston in the Lexington Alarm at the start of the
Revolution.
This house still has some original
clapboards, floorboards and early hardware, and its original fireplaces are
still in operation. The three main rooms on the first floor have paneled
fireplace walls, and there are three remaining inside sliding window shutters.
The ell is a later addition, dating probably before 1825. Like some other 18th
century Glastonbury houses, the doorway has a gabled portico added in the
Federal or Classical Revival period, but the doorway measurements were
originally that of the four-foot wide double doorways customary to the
Connecticut River Valley in the 18th century. |
