Greek revival

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1842: The residence of the carpenter and house builder, and a deacon in the Baptist Church.

1844: Capt W. Z. Buddington was in the coastal and West Indies trade and later the insurance business.  His three sons were also sailors and all three were lost at sea; and his daughter married Groton Bank sea captain Sanford Miner.

This is the only brick house on Groton Bank.  When the captain purchased this property in 1844 it consisted of 9 acres of land which he began to subdivide.  A couple of years later he sold 5 acres (on the south side of Broad Street beween what  is now Monument and Cottage Streets) to his nephew, whaling Captain  James Monroe Buddington, who apparently lived on part of  it for some years before buying a house on Monument Street (described below).

1850: In the 1850s Moxley built eleven sizable wooden vessels in his Thames river shipyard across the street from his house. Capt. William H. Allen, who bears the fame of having made the most successful voyage on record in the annals of the whaling industry purchased the property in 1858 and made it his homestead until his death in 1907.  Capt. Allen was a remarkably successful whaler who sailed from New London harbor and from New Bedford, MA.  The cargo from his most successful whaling voyage completed in 1866 sold for $417,000—breaking Capt. Ebenezer Morgan’s record of a year earlier (see below).  Later Allen went into business and banking.  He was a founder of the Savings Bank of New London and president of the Mariners Savings Bank also in New London. 

c. 1850: Kelly was a whaling captain sailing mainly out of New Bedford, MA.  The house was built by Jesse Smith, who in the 1850s built a number of houses on Groton Bank, including the Captain James M. Buddington house next north.

1854: Capt. J. M. Buddington was an internationally known whaling captain who became most famous for his rescue of the large British ship, the  HMS Resolute abandoned in Arctic ice after her crew failed to find the lost party of Sir John Franklin who had been searching for the Northwest Passage.  With a skeleton crew Buddington sailed the abandoned ship back to New London arriving on Christmas Eve in 1855.  The U.S. returned the ship to England and after she was decommissioned, Queen Victoria had several desks made from her teak timbers.  The ornate “Resolute” desk, used by the President in the Oval Office of the White House is the most famous .  Smaller desks were given to Lady Franklin and Mrs. Henry Grinnell who supported expeditions in search of Franklin.  Grinnell's desk is now in the New Bedford Whaling Museum, MA.  Buddington is also reported to have received a desk from Queen Victoria, but its fate and what it looked like are unknown.  Queen Victoria is also reported to have had two "Resolute" desks, one in Buckingham Palace and the other in her yacht.  The latter is reportedly now in a museum in Portmouth, England.

Mid 1800s: Jonathan Leeds owned the oldest part, the rear, of this house in 1793.  In front of that, the Greek Revival portion of the house was added in the mid-1800s and a Victorian addition to the left in the late 1800s.