In 1756, this simple structure was the birthplace of the Danforth family of pewterers, one of New England's leading craft dynasties. For nearly a century, three generations of Danforth men made pewter goods ranging from plain plates to teapots, tankards, and communion service sets, and their work is now displayed in museums around the country. Pewter, sometimes called the poor man's silver, was made primarily of tin, often mixed with small quantities of lead and antimony, and in the 1700s and 1800s it offered middle-class families an affordable, reasonably durable alternative. Family patriarch Thomas Danforth began hand crafting pewter in 1756 in this combined workshop and store on Henshaw Lane, today's College Street, and he was succeeded by his sons and then by a grandson, who left the trade in 1846. The Danforths and other local pewterers helped make Middletown a major pewter center rivaling Boston and Philadelphia, marketing their wares throughout the country, while descendants of Thomas Danforth and others trained in the shop carried the trade to other Connecticut communities as well as Massachusetts and Rhode Island. The shop was dismantled in 1979 when its original College Street location was targeted for a parking lot, and it was reconstructed on this site in 1984. Josiah Danforth, grandson of Thomas Danforth, made a teapot and coffeepot in his Middletown shop probably between 1825 and 1840, but by the time he left the business in 1846, pewter was becoming unfashionable as Britannia ware, a shinier amalgam more like silver, replaced it.