Tremko-Stebbins House

Just Because
Tremko-Stebbins House, Ashford

When I began this website in 2006, I started building my massive list of hundreds of museums in Connecticut. Ashford didn’t (and doesn’t) have much in the way of museums, but the Tremko-Stebbins House was noted as a potential future museum.

But there comes a time in every “Visit Every Single Connecticut Museum Guy’s” life when he has to say, “screw it. It ain’t happening. Let’s go snap a few pictures, find whatever I can online, and call it a day.”

Today is that day.

The problem is now that this page really isn’t anything. I’ve never written a page about a “potential future museum” before. So what are we doing here other than satisfying my unique and undiagnosed form of OCD and padding my “Ashford stuff” list of things to see and do?

But Ashford doesn’t need padding. There’s plenty of interesting things to do up there. But these two old buildings are right on Route 44 and they’re historic and who knew Warrenville was a section of Ashford?

The house was built round about 1773 by Thomas Stebbins Sr. The last owner of the house was George T. Tremko, who bought it in 1946. It was known as the post-master’s house because the Tremko’s were involved with the post office next door. The Town of Ashford bought the house via eminent domain in 1987 and there were plans to take it down and build a new library on the premises.

Which is nuts because the town’s Babcock Library, right across the street, is… unique to say the least. Unique because the library is upstairs and Knowlton Memorial Hall is downstairs which is more or less an auditorium. Anyway, the Ashford Historical Society helped to save the house and to acquire a grant to rehabilitate its exterior in the mid 20-teens and since then, I don’t know what’s been going on, but I believe the town and Society still plan to make it a museum.

And by the looks of my picture through the window above, it seems like there’s progress being made.

These things take time when you consider these things are almost entirely retiree/volunteer efforts that rely on scarce grant funding.

I believe they will get it done someday. Ashford doesn’t have a town history museum, and this place would be perfect for it. Community gatherings happens here in the old post office like Bingo Nights and such, but aside from the fresh exterior paint and siding work, I don’t think anything more will happen insofar as museuming goes.

But here we are, hoping and wishing… and after decades of hoping and wishing, I needed to move on. And if this page serves as the kick in the butt to get a museum completed before I’m “completed” on this earth, I’ll take it.

Information above from Daniel Sterner’s Historic Buildings of Connecticut

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