Visiting the Bellamy-Ferriday House in Bethlehem, Connecticut
The Bellamy-Ferriday House in Bethlehem, Connecticut is a house museum dating back to 1754 when the first owner of the house, Joseph Bellamy, built it. Bellamy was a pastor during the Great Awakening, a religious period which marked a Puritan, or Congregationalist, revival. Bellamy was born in Cheshire, Connecticut in 1719 and graduated from Yale. He decided to build his home in Bethlehem where he bought land that was considered natural and peaceful in the Litchfield Hills, and still is, today.
Bellamy pastored a church in Bethlehem and wrote a number of tracts, the most famous of them being “True Religion Delineated”, stressing the value and importance of orthodox Puritan theology. Like other pastors of the Great Awakening, most notably John Edwards, Bellamy wanted to be a moving force to bringing lapsed Christians back into the fold by appealing to their simple way of life and the emotional fulfillment of Puritan theology. Bellamy’s sermons were not like the “fire and brimstone” ones of Edwards but he was conscious of human nature and how his followers were to strive through simple living, and faith, which saved humans from corruption. Challenging popular Calvinist doctrine of the time, Bellamy believed that anyone could receive salvation through faith, and that faith was not confined to just a select few. Moreover, he preached that faith in God by man was a living relationship, to be nurtured by every Christian believer in his congregation. Such sermons were a comfort to the simple but hardworking New England farmers. Joseph Bellamy’s great grandson, Edward Bellamy, wrote the Utopian novel “Looking Backward”, a view of a futuristic Socialist America in 2000.
The Bellamy-Ferriday white clapboard house is built in the Greek revival style with Ionic columns on the front porch. The house also had a farm and when the house switched ownership in the 1910’s, a garden was installed. The new owners, Henry and Eliza Ferriday, maintained the house as well as they could, decorating the house with American, English, and European antiques. The garden contains roses, lilacs, peonies, magnolia trees, herbs and other flowers, in the formal parterre style. After Henry’s death, his daughter Caroline continued to keep the house and garden maintained, even after her mother died in 1953. Caroline researched information on the original owner of the house, Joseph Bellamy, and worked to restore some parts of the house, particularly the pavilion that lay beneath the south porch of the house. The interior of the house is decorated in typical eighteenth-century style that would reflect a well to do family of that time period in New England. The wide foyer opens to the dining room in front, and to the left of the foyer, is the sitting room. Behind the sitting room is the parlor, or living room, and the library is next to it. On the second floor of the house is located the master bedroom, another bedroom, and closet space. This beautifully decorated house was declared a historic landmark in 1990 and soon became open to the public for tours.
The Bellamy-Ferriday House is located on Main Street north of state highway 132 in Bethlehem, Connecticut.
Image Credit: Jerry Dougherty, CC BY 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons.
