Amos Palmer House (Stonington, Connecticut)
The Amos Palmer House; is a historic Georgian style home located on Main Street in Stonington Borough, Connecticut. The house was built by Captain Amos Palmer in 1787 to replace his former home on the lot which burned after a neighbors' barn caught fire.
James Hammond Trumbull (1821-1897), a Connecticut state archivist, mentioned the fire which occurred on May 24, 1789, in his journal:
A barn full of hay belonging to Esq. Nathaniel Miner [1732-1815], took fire, and communicated to a store & dwelling house belonging to Capt. Amos Palmer which were both consumed, with a quantity of West Indian goods, two or three hundred bushels of Indian corn & a quantity of household furniture.
Capt. Palmer's loss is about [pounds sterling]1000.
Between August 9-August 12, 1814 during the War of 1812 the house was amongst 40 homes in Stonington hit with cannon fire during an attack by four British ships, HMS Ramillies, HMS Pactolus, HMS Dispatch, and HMS Terror, under the command of Sir Thomas Hardy. Amos Palmer was reputed to have taken a cannonball which hit his house to the American gun battery to fire back at the British.
Former owners
- Amos Palmer:(1747 - 1816) Sea captain and privateer during the American Revolutionary War; the original owner and builder he owned the house until his death on February 18, 1816.
- James McNeill Whistler: The artist whose most famous work is the painting Whistler's Mother, lived in the home as a child between 1837-1840 with his parents George Washington Whistler an engineer helping to build the Providence to Stonington Railroad, and Anna McNeill Whistler whose sister was married to Dr. George E. Palmer of Stonington.
- Stephen Vincent Benet: The Pulitzer Prize winner bought the house in 1940 and it was owned by his heirs after his death in 1943 until 1983. Benet is buried in Evergreen Cemetery in Stonington.
- James Archibald Houston: A Canadian artist, designer, children's author and film-maker