Captain Joseph Lockwood (1760s)
Captain Joseph Lockwood, brother of Major Ebenezer Lockwood, built this house around 1760 upon his marriage to Hannah Close. On the morning of July 2, 1779, Prudence Lockwood (Capt. Joseph's daughter) watched from the window of this house as Major Tarleton and his band of British soldiers passed right by! The British had come for her Uncle and father, who were leading the American troops in this area. Prudence told her mother she wanted to join the fighting! Her mother pulled her back and drew the shades. There was a terrible fight, and the British went on to burn her uncle's house, Major Ebenezer Lockwood. They would have burned Prudence's home too, but some American soldiers in the field fired upon the British and extinguished that idea!
Prudence's father, Capt Joseph Lockwood, was granted the first pension issued to a Revolutionary soldier. Prudence went on to marry her cousin John Smith of Stamford, and had eleven children, whom she raised in this house. At the time the farm consisted of 500 acres. Capt. Joseph Lockwood's descendants retained ownership of the house until 1939, when it was sold out of the Lockwood family by Capt. Joseph's great-great-granddaughter, Helen Smith Tomlinson. She and her husband, Dr. Edward F. Tomlinson, built the side porch and made other major alterations to the house around the turn of the century. The house was originally a center-chimney house.