The Parsons House, located at 180 South Main Street has been traced back by the Hon. O. H. D. Fowler to 1759, the year it was built by John Parsons.

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John was married to Esther Hall, a daughter of Samuel Hall. Upon Johns' death in 1760, the house passed onto Johns' son Samuel. It was during this time frame when the house became a tavern and a stopping place for the stages that used to run between New York and Boston. It then was sold to Jesse Hall, a cousin of Esther.

Jesse Hall sold the house to Captain Caleb Thompson, in 1805. Captain Thompson was a carriage builder by trade and pursued that calling in a shop that stood in the north front corner of the yard, on the site that was later occupied by a “Liberty tree” planted by the Society. He was a skilled cabinet maker and at one time made coffins in this shop. It was a tradition that when a small boy of that period approached that part of South Main Street after dark, in fear and trembling, he would whistle in boyish glee when the “coffin shop” was far behind him. Years after, this shop was moved to South Colony Street and made into a house where it still stands, but the weird tales connected with it are there unknown.

Captain Thompson’s daughter married Eli W. Ives, who, for sixteen years, was judge of probate and town clerk, and a gentleman of the old school. One has only to go to the probate and town records of the early 1840’s and 50’s and see how beautifully they are written to know they were kept by a gentleman of education and refinement. The commission granted to Caleb Thompson by Governor John Tread­well in 1805, naming him a captain in command of a Wallingford company of infantry, was entered into the possession of the Historical Society. Joseph Noyes, a descendant of Rev. James Noyes, who lived in the “Dana” house (another of our old historic Wallingford mansions) had passed the commission to Major Norton. Mrs. Hannah Norton then presented the commission to the historical society, where it currently resides, having returned to the original house where it was first received by Captain Thompson one-hundred years earlier.

Fannie Ives Schember, to whose generosity the historical society owes the possession of this beautiful home, was daughter of Judge Ives and granddaughter of Captain Caleb Thompson. Her early childhood and youth was spent at the house and the place was endeared to her by countless early associations. The house was leased to the Historical Society in 1919, who took title to the house in 1932, under the terms of her will. To her not only is the Wallingford Historical Society indebted, but the entire community is under a great obligation for what is a most attractive adjunct to the literary and social life of the town.

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​The Parson House was added to the Nation Register of Historic Places in 1982. You can read more about the architectural details here:

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