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David Lambert House in Wilton CT, Crazy history of the house!

By
Real Estate Broker/Owner with Dagny's Real Estate

There will be a walking tour with the first selectman and Wilton historian Bob Russell on Wilton Historical Society's perserved buildings at Lambert corner on Saturday, October 7  at 11AM.

 This reminds me of the story about David Lambert House that I shared on my blog a couple of year ago.  It was a facinating story perhaps the most sensational crime story in Wilton's history. 

 

The David Lambert House is a historic house located at 150 Danbury Road at the intersection of Route 7 (Danbury Road) and Route 33 (Westport Road) . It is a 2-1/2 story wood frame structure, five bays wide, with a gambrel roof and a large central chimney.  The house was built by David Lambert, one of Wilton's early settlers, and dates to sometime between his arrival in the area in 1722 and about 1750.

He was married to the talented poet Eva Ogden. Their only children both died as infants. 

On Dec.17, 1897 David's wife Eva was bound and chloroformed when two men wearing masks entered their home looking for money and silver. When David arrived home he struggled with the two masked men and was shot.  He died five days later.  A very intense investigation carried on until the two men were found and arrested. It turned out that  the murderers were two students of David S.R.Lambert some years before.

The student, Ben Willis, was Lambert's youngest student. And he became troublesome and uncontroallable after a strange, veiled woman, later found to be Ben's mother, visited him several times. For mistreating professor Lambert's horse, Ben once received a severe thrashing that he never forgot. 

Ben was convicted and sentenced to hang in Dec., 1898. Max Brockhaus, also a former Lambert pupil, was tried and hanged on Sep.6, 1899

Ms. Lambert continued to live until her death and it was owned by a Canadian cousin until 1928 when it was sold out of the hands of the family that had built it two hundred years earlier.

It is now owned by the local historical society, which uses it as a museum and an office with some privately rented apartments upstairs. 

Comments (1)

Wayne Martin
Wayne M Martin - Chicago, IL
Real Estate Broker - Retired

Good afternoon Dagny. The historical walk would definitely be interesting. Enjoy your afternoon

Oct 06, 2017 12:02 PM