Makens Bemont House

The Makens Bemont House, also known as the Huguenot House, is one of few remaining eighteenth-century houses remaining in East Hartford. Construction on the historic home finished in 1761 and the structure was relocated to its present location in 1971. Hartford was founded in 1635 and in 1783, two years after Washington's forces defeated the British at Yorktown, the area east of Hartford incorporated as an independent city known as East Hartford. 

The house exhibits many of the qualities distinctive of the era, notably its small size and a central chimney poking through the gambrel roof. However, the house also includes several features that make it unique. For instance, the Bemont home sits on brownstone blocks instead of the usual rubble underpinning mostly because of its abundance in the Connecticut Valley (but rarely anywhere else). Thus many builders took advantage of its availability. The Bemont house also consists of brownstone entrance steps and fireplace walls. An intriguing trait of the historic home involves its plentiful closets, which differed from the typical eighteenth-century behavior of merely relying on dressers, cabinets, and pegs on the walls. 

Edmond Bemont built the home in 1761 and lived there for four years before selling it to his son, Makens, who lived there until he passed away in 1826. Makens worked primarily as a saddle maker (and is said to have supplied the Revolutionary army), but he also served for a time as tax collector for East Hartford, and he held shares in both local banks and the Hartford (Bulkeley) Bridge project. He was one of the few East Hartford residents to own a carriage at that time. 

Two centuries after Bemont built the home, citizens of East Hartford and other nearby towns raised money to save it from demolition. The house’s last owner donated it to the Historical Society of East Hartford in 1968 and then the house was moved in 1971 to a nearby park and restored to appear like a typical eighteenth-century dwelling. Although extensive renovation on the home took place, a tremendous deal of original material and structure remains.  

Clouette, Bruce. "Nomination Form: Makens Bemont House." National Register of Historic Places. nps.gov. March 25, 1982. 

Daraskevich, Bette. "President's Message." Historical Society of East Hartford Newsletter. hseh.org. May, 2011. http://www.hseh.org/1105_hseh_news.pdf. 

Goodwin, Joseph O. East Hartford: Its History and Traditions. Hartford: Lockwood & Brainard Co., 1879. Digital copy located at https://ia600902.us.archive.org/0/items/easthartford00good/easthartford00good_bw.pdf. 

Historical Society of East Hartford. http://www.hseh.org/Research.htm