Buttolph-Williams House
Near Hartford, Connecticut
A few steps from the Joseph Webb House in Wethersfield, Connecticut, stands a far older structure: the Buttolph-Williams House, completed around seventeen eleven and considered one of the best-preserved examples of seventeenth-century New England domestic architecture anywhere in the country. Its steep pitched roof, tiny casement windows, and overhanging second story are design features borrowed directly from English medieval building tradition, brought to Connecticut by the first generation of colonists and still standing more than three centuries later. Elizabeth George Speare used this house as the inspiration and setting for her nineteen fifty-eight novel The Witch of Blackbird Pond, which won the Newbery Medal and introduced generations of American schoolchildren to Puritan Connecticut. The house is maintained by Connecticut Landmarks and is open to the public, a tangible artifact of the world Speare brought to life.
