Where the Revolution Lived: The Joseph Webb House and Wethersfield, CT

The Joseph Webb House stands at 211 Main Street in Wethersfield, Connecticut. Built in 1752, it is the house where George Washington spent five days in May 1781 mapping out the Yorktown campaign with the French general Rochambeau. The house has stayed in place for nearly 275 years, even as one of America’s oldest towns has changed around it.

This is part three of a longer series covering homes that were standing when the country won its independence. Each piece shares a short history of the home and charts how its neighborhood grew around it. Our last article looked at the Hancock-Clarke House in Lexington, Massachusetts, which you can find here: Hancock-Clarke House. 

Key takeaways:

• The Joseph Webb House was built in 1752 and is a National Historic Landmark in Wethersfield, Connecticut.
• Washington and Rochambeau met in the front parlor and sketched the plan that led to the Siege of Yorktown, the battle that effectively ended the Revolution.
• Wethersfield was founded in 1634 and is arguably the oldest town in Connecticut. Old Wethersfield is now the state’s largest historic district.
• Today Wethersfield is a quiet Hartford suburb where the average home is listed for over $450,000 to buy or close to $2,000 to rent. 

The Joseph Webb House: a 1752 Georgian home

The Webb House, built in 1752 in Wethersfield, CT, is a Georgian home, a style named for the British kings who ruled during the 1700s. Georgian design is built around symmetry and order. The front is flat and balanced, with a center door and an even row of windows on each side. The windows are tall and divided into many small panes. A matching pair of chimneys rises at the ends of the roof. 

The Georgian design and large windows was the height of fashion in 1752. It signaled that Joseph Webb, a successful merchant, had money. 

By the spring of 1781, the war had gone on for six years. Washington needed a plan to break the deadlock with his French allies. He had hoped to meet Rochambeau in Hartford but the Connecticut General Assembly was in session and the city had no proper rooms to spare. Instead, he chose Wethersfield instead, less than five miles south, on the advice of his aide Samuel Blachley Webb. Samuel Webb suggested that they stay at his brother’s home.

Washington arrived and lodged at the Webb House, where he and Rochambeau talked. The meeting set the combined French and American armies in motion, ending at Yorktown that October, where the British surrender effectively won the war. According to an article in the New York Times, the bedchamber where Washington slept still has the wallpaper that lined the room when he stayed in the house in 1781. 

Wethersfield in the 1600s: founding a river town

The town of Wethersfield was already old when the Webb House was constructed. A small party of English Puritans, known as the “ten adventurers”, settled on the floodplain beside the Connecticut River in 1634 on land they called “Watertown”. By 1637, they renamed it “Wethersfield”. Later that year, Wethersfield was incorporated alongside Windsor and Hartford as one of Connecticut Colony’s three original towns. It has long claimed to be the oldest of the three, the colony’s “most ancient towne.”

By 1645, 125 families had moved to Wethersfield. The river gave the settlers fertile soil and a highway to the sea. Ships could load at the town landing and sail south to the West Indies. 

Wethersfield in the 1700s and 1800s: onions and seeds

For decades the river made Wethersfield rich. But the river was also temperamental. In 1692, a powerful flood moved the Connecticut River’s main channel to the east and destroyed all but one of the warehouses in Wethersfield along the waterfront. The deep harbor that had carried the town’s fortunes was transformed into a cove, today called Wethersfield Cove. 

By the 1730s, the town’s most important crop was the red onion. Wethersfield grew so many that it earned the nickname Oniontown.Thousands of bushels a year went down the river to the West Indies. When the onion trade declined in the 1800s, companies in Wethersfield moved onto the seed business. Still, onions remain an important part of local culture in Wethersfield, with local onion-themed mascots and events. 

Wethersfield in the 1900s: becoming a Hartford suburb

Wethersfield spent the 19th century as a farm town near the growing capital of Hartford. By 1900, building lots in Hartford were getting scarce, and Wethersfield’s growth as a suburb began. The first neighborhoods to fill in were the ones along the trolley lines that ran to and from the Old State House in Hartford. Where the streetcar went, houses followed.

Developers moved in to meet the demand. One local builder, Albert Hubbard, put up rows of homes in the early 1900s. He offered buyers dozens of house plans to choose from, an early version of the mass-built suburb. Later, the Silas Deane Highway, named for a Wethersfield diplomat, cut through town and pulled new commercial strips and houses along with it.

Through all of this, Old Wethersfield and the Webb House stayed mostly intact. The 20th-century growth happened around the historic core, not on top of it. In fact, Old Wethersfield is now the largest historic district in Connecticut, at about two square miles with some 1,100 buildings.

Renting and buying in Wethersfield today

Old Wethersfield wears its age comfortably. Brick sidewalks run under big shade trees along Main Street, past colonial homes and a row of small shops. You can browse antiques and galleries, buy seeds at the old Comstock Ferre store, and grab a slice at Village Pizza or a cone at the Main Street Creamery. At the edge of the neighborhood, Wethersfield Cove brings walkers and boaters from all around the area. 

However, most available homes for sale and homes for rent are not in Old Wethersfield. They are in the newer parts of the town. Availability is quite small as well. In June 2026, there were only just over 20 homes in Wethersfield listed for rent on Trulia and 31 homes listed for sale. Homes for sale were almost entirely single-family houses, whereas rentals were approximately 80% apartments. 

Here’s a quick breakdown of home prices based on active Trulia listings in May 2026: 

• Average rent: $1,950
• Average rent (3BR): $2,650
• Average home price (3BR House): $464,500

If you are interested in finding out more about the available homes, you can check out homes to buy and homes to rent on Trulia. You can also find local reviews of Wethersfield or other cities and neighborhoods on Trulia that give a sense of the community and what it is like to live there.