Avery-Copp House, Part 1
For the 250th anniversary of the United States, I took a three-day patriotic trip to the Thames River National Heritage Park in Groton and New London, CT. After a morning touring Fort Griswold Battlefield State Park, which included its monument, museum, and the interior of the fort, followed by an early afternoon boat tour, I was able to explore the beautiful yellow Victorian that I had spotted at several points during the trip so far. Avery-Copp House is an independently managed museum from a very different historical period than my other stops in Groton. Due to the high number of lovingly preserved artifacts in the house, I will be describing my tour in two parts. The first will describe the history of the house, and the second will describe its artifacts and decor.
The Avery-Copp House is named for a family with two separate surnames, as the house was at one point inherited by a married woman who used both her maiden name and husband’s surname, Betsey Wood Avery Copp. Many years before that around 1800, the property was built by Rufus Avery. He was a veteran of the American Revolutionary War, first enlisting in May 1776, a couple of months before the Declaration of Independence. The end of his service came in September 1781 when he survived the massacre at Fort Griswold and was taken as a prisoner of war. Fortunately, he was freed after the Battle of Yorktown in mid to late October 1781. His wife, Hannah Lord Avery, gave birth to their first child, David Avery, on October 9 while he was imprisoned. Rufus lived a long life, dying in 1842 at age 83. (He was still beat out by two of my favorite Revolutionary War veterans, Peter Stephen Duponceau, who died in 1844 at age 83, and Agrippa Hull, who died in 1848 at age 89. All three were teenagers when they began their service.)
Back to Avery-Copp House, its current Victorian looks came to pass during the 1860s. As the American Civil War transformed the United States, Mary Jane Avery Ramsdell transformed her family’s home, perhaps not quite the perfect comparison. Next in line was the aforementioned Betsey Avery Copp and her husband Belton Copp Jr, who moved in with their children in 1895. The youngest child, Joseph Addison Copp, inherited the house in 1930. He changed almost nothing about the property for the next sixty-one years and lived there much of the time, although he also had a house with his wife, Mary Elise Chaney Copp, whom he married in 1963. Joseph happened to be her third husband, but their marriage lasted for about twenty-eight years. She would die two years after Joe in 1993 at age 104. Both donated their bodies to Yale University School of Medicine for scientific research, as Joseph had attended Yale.
Upon Joe’s death, his family decided to preserve the house as a museum. This also included the Ferry Spring outside of the house, a fountain installed by Mary Jane towards the end of her renovation project around 1870. the spring was intended to quench the thirst of boat travelers and horses, or anyone else in the public who needed a drink. Municipal water did not become available until 1905, and many locals still preferred the spring water. After World War II, when modern health codes developed, the town closed the fountain. However, Joe still drank the water each day throughout his life, since the spring also fed into a nearby cistern. He even sent water to Yale to be tested, but the results did not satisfy the new health department. With the history of the family complete, I will end Part 1 covering my tour of Avery-Copp House.
