1720 Colonial Cape Cod Museum With Revolutionary War Lore
154 Metcalf Road, Tolland, CT 06084
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free or by-donation admission; check Tolland Historical Society for current schedule.
Access
Limited Access
1720 colonial Cape Cod house with original floors, stairs, and cellar
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1720 · Oldest House in Tolland · Colonial Cape Cod Architecture · Revolutionary War Hessian POW Site · National Register of Historic Places
Daniel Benton built the family homestead on a forty-acre farm in Tolland in 1720, on land then on the eastern frontier of the Connecticut colony. The house is a Cape Cod with rear ell, ten rooms, five fireplaces, and a deep cellar — a classic example of early-eighteenth-century Connecticut domestic architecture. The Bentons farmed and occupied the property continuously for six generations, an unusual stretch of single-family residency that ended only in the mid-twentieth century.
During the American Revolutionary War, the homestead was used to house approximately twenty Hessian soldiers — German auxiliaries who fought for the British and who, after capture, were sometimes paroled to private homes rather than held in formal camps. The cellar still preserves rafters bearing intricate scrollwork carved by the Hessian prisoners during their captivity at Tolland, a rare physical record of the British-Hessian POW experience.
The homestead's most-told family story concerns Daniel Benton's grandson Elisha Benton, born 1748. Elisha fell in love with Jemima Barrows, born 1759 and eleven years his junior. Both families opposed the relationship on grounds of age and social class. Elisha returned home from military service in January 1777 with smallpox and died shortly after. Jemima, who cared for him during his illness, contracted the disease and died within months. The families agreed to bury the couple near each other but, because they were never married, separated their graves on opposite sides of the carriage path leading to the house.
The Tolland Historical Society has operated the property as a museum since 1970, opening it seasonally for guided tours that interpret the Benton family, the Hessian POW history, and the broader story of eighteenth-century life in northeast Connecticut.
Sources
The Daniel Benton Homestead carries one of Connecticut's most enduring colonial-house ghost traditions. A maid reportedly saw the spectral figure of a young woman in a bridal dress in an upper-floor mirror; later accounts attribute the figure to Jemima Barrows, the young woman who died of smallpox after nursing her fiancé Elisha Benton in 1777. The tradition holds that her presence remains in the house as a quiet, unfulfilled vigil.
The cellar carries a separate strand of lore tied to the Hessian POWs imprisoned there during the Revolutionary War. Accounts include the sound of low conversation in a German-sounding cadence, occasional footsteps along the stone cellar floor, and a sense of company in the space below the kitchen ell. The carved rafters from the Hessian period remain physically present.
Museum docents and Tolland Historical Society staff log occasional accounts from visitors and program attendees: unexplained vibrations through the floorboards, soft knockings on interior doors, lights flickering with no apparent cause, and the impression of figures moving past the front windows when seen from outside the house at dusk. The Society does not promote the house primarily as a paranormal destination; the ghost tradition is treated as a strand of local folklore rather than as a marketed experience.
Notable Entities
Media Appearances
A guided tour of the 1720 Cape Cod homestead led by Tolland Historical Society docents. The cellar retains rafters carved by Hessian prisoners during the Revolutionary War. The tour interprets six generations of Benton family occupation and the Elisha Benton-Jemima Barrows tragedy.
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