The Fourth of July in Guilford

TD and I went out to visit my parents in Guilford, Connecticut, for the holiday weekend. My sister Cynthia and her partner Barb were visiting too from Colorado Springs so it was quite a jolly get together. Like everywhere else in the Northeast, it was hot!
Guilford is a pretty town located on the Long Island Sound that I have written about here before. It's a historic town too, and this is its story: in May of 1639 Reverend Henry Whitfield and a group of Puritans left England in search of religious freedom. They arrived by late summer at what is now New Haven. They negotiated with the local Native American Indians and their leader Wequash, and bought land and settled in what is now Guilford. Later, in the eighteenth century, Guilford was attacked during the Revolutionary War by the British soldiers coming from New York. The local militia defeated the foreign enemy. Now, Guilford is considered to have one of the largest collection of historic homes in New England, with important buildings from the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

On Saturday, we went down to the town beach where people were happily boating

and kayaking.

I decided to go for a run on...Whitfield Street, which links the beach with the town green. There are many beautiful nineteenth century houses on the street. One house in Guilford from that era was a stop on the Underground Railroad during the Civil War, where respite was offered for slaves on their journey to freedom.
This sparkling house on Whitfield Street was as white and ornate as a wedding cake.

It has a deep, columned porch on three sides. This house reminds me of 611.

Instead of traditional white, this house is a dusty ochre with forest green trim.

Hanging pots decorated a porch

and clouds of hydrangea bloomed against a pale lilac exterior.

This white house from 1852 was guarded by a fence of evergreens

but when I got closer a gap in the middle revealed a secret giveaway of free books.

We had a swell weekend in Guilford, and I hope you had a nice Fourth of July too.