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The Shaw-Perkins Mansion

The wealthy merchant, Captain Nathaniel Shaw, began building the granite mansion in the 1750's with the help of French settlers being dispersed from Nova Scotia during the time of the French and Indian War. The house was probably finished in 1758, as the year on the fireback in the dining room fireplace indicates.

Genealogy is important to the history of the mansion, because the building and grounds were inherited by one family member from another, and, at one point, by in-laws.

Captain Nathaniel Shaw (1703-1778) and his wife Temperance Harris Shaw (1709-1796) had a total of eight children, only two of whom had children of their own.

During the Revolutionary War the mansion served as Connecticut's Naval Office. The fires of Benedict Arnold's New London Raid were set to totally devastate the house but a workman's quick action confined the damage to the kitchen.