Upriver History: A rich merchant, a stage driver and a future Mount Holyoke head shared Somers Center
The 1979 National Register nomination for the Somers Historic District traces who lived along Main Street in the 1800s.
SOMERS - The houses along Main Street in Somers Center belonged to a mix of neighbors in the 1800s, from the town's richest man to a stagecoach driver, according to the Somers Historic District's National Register nomination.
Many residents worked at or near the crossroads, the nomination says. Warren Kibbe ran the Somers Inn and, for a time, the store next door, and built a Gothic Revival cottage on Springfield Road around 1860. A merchant, two doctors and a sawmill owner also lived in the center.
Mary Chapin Pease ran a "Select School" in her home and later became head of Mount Holyoke Seminary, now Mount Holyoke College. Ebenezer Clark made straw bonnets near his house from about 1824, copying the palm-leaf bonnets of the nearby Enfield Shakers.
The wealthiest was Henry Root Kibbe, who lived from 1825 to 1909 and came home after making a fortune in the notions business in Philadelphia. By 1979 his mansion was gone, but the 1894 Colonial Revival house he built for his son, called Shadow Lawn, was still standing. A small, plain house on the same street was home to John Bond, a stage driver.
The nomination was prepared in 1979 by Bruce Clouette for the Connecticut Historical Commission.
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