Introduction

Palmer-Warner House 1934 and 2018

These are images of the Palmer-Warner House from earliest to most recent. The top photograph was taken by Frederic Palmer in 1934 before he purchased the home in 1936, and the bottom photograph was recently taken by Connecticut Landmarks, who now owns the home and the surrounding 50 acre property.

The Palmer-Warner House is located at 307 Town St. in East Haddam, Connecticut. The original owners, John Warner and his wife Mehitable Chapman Richarson, built the house on their 1,000-acre property (spanning from the house’s current location all the way to the Connecticut River) in 1738 after receiving an inheritance from Mehitable’s late sister. The two lived in the house with their eight children: John, Daniel, Nathaniel, Jabez, Elizabeth, Abraham, Noahdiah, and Joseph. John Warner was a blacksmith who produced elaborate hardware. He had two smithies where he worked, one right across the street from his East Haddam home, and the other in Hadlyme.

The home and smithy was passed down to John and Mehitable’s youngest son Joseph, who then passed it down to his youngest son Oliver. Over the years the home continued getting passed down in the family until it was sold to the Balleck family, who own one of the neighboring properties (it is unclear when or why it was sold). In 1936, Frederic Palmer Jr. purchased the house with his mother, Mary Brennan Palmer, from Fred Ballek Sr.

Frederic continued to live in the home with his mother until her passing in 1943. About 2 years after her death, Frederic invited his life partner, Howard Metzger, to come live with him in the home (formally called Dunstaffnage – named after a castle in Scotland). Howard agreed and the two spent their lives together there for the next 25 years until Frederic passed away in 1970. After Frederic passed, Howard continued to live in and care for the home until his own death in 2005.

This property is very important to the history of Connecticut because of Frederic’s work as a preservation architect throughout the state. He worked on restoring multiple historic homes throughout Connecticut, including a few of those now owned by Connecticut Landmarks such as the Hempstead Houses in New London, Nathan Hale Homestead in Coventry, and Buttolph-Williams House in Wethersfield. Frederic was also instrumental in getting other properties donated to the organization, including Bellamy-Ferriday House in Bethlehem, Amasa Day House in Moodus as well as two properties in Hartford: Isham-Terry House, and Butler-McCook House. (For more information on these properties, visit ctlandmarks.org)

Not only is this property important to the history of Connecticut, it is also important to the history of the LGBTQ Community. The Palmer-Warner House is the first historic house in Connecticut that is open to the public to have an LGBTQ interpretation, and is one of only a few nationally registered LGBTQ historic sites in the country (though that number is slowly starting to increase as scholars see the importance of learning LGBTQ history).