(1.1)   A History of the Milford Side Area of Woodbridge  >  Cover  >  1 wepawaug road

This house faces north from above the intersection of Ansonia and Wepawaug roads. The latter is the entrance to Wepawaug Estates, of which this house is now a part.

1 Wepawaug Road consist of a rectangular main block with two-story wings on either side. The one On the right is two bays wide and has a gabled roof dormer. The other wing, added in 1938 when the house was moved back from the Paned attached garage. The main doorway has sidelights and a transom, sheltered beneath a gabled-portico, supported by fluted columns, probably an early twentieth-century addition. There are closed bed pediments in the gable ends which contain paired windows, _suggesting an enlargement of the original house in the Greek Revival period Most of the windows contain 12-over-12 sash except for those in the left wing, Which have 8-over-12. The slightly off-center main chimney is stuccoed above the roof.

Both the land and the house are historically important for their association with the Baldwin family. Barnabas Baldwin  the youngest son of Richard Baldwin of Milford, received the land in 1725 in exchange for his quit claim on the Hoggs Meadow-purchase, which his father had obtained from the Paugusett tribe in 1461, The 70-acre piece passed to his son, Theophilus Baldwin (1699-1784), and the original dwelling here was built about 1757 for his son, Henry Baldwin (1734-1801), when he. married Lydia Botsford, and deeded over to him in 1760 with five acres. (See 958 Baldwin Road for the Theophilus Baldwin House.) Over time the house lot became 20 acres with mire than 100 acres of associated property and remained in the Baldwin family until about 1880. The last of the family included Martha Baldwin, who was living here in 1870 with her husband, Daniel Upson, and John M. Baldwin, a 15-year-old schoolboy. Among the many owners since that time were the Cabots who bought the house in 1915 and probably did much of the Colonial Revival remodeling. They had extensive gardens and provided their Portuguese gardeners with a dormitory, which was the source of one of several antecdotes about the property. During Prohibition, the dormitory was a speakeasy known. as Chateau St. Claire and later mysteriously burned. Also, because an underground room was accidently discovered here in the 1950s, the site is believed to have been a station on the Underground Railroad.