Built in 1778 by Deacon Joseph Mather, son of Reverend Moses Mather, the Mather Homestead began as a 100-acre working farm that supported Joseph, his wife Sarah, and their eleven children with wood, crops, and livestock. Built during the Revolutionary War as a safe house thought to be distant from British raids along the Connecticut shoreline, the home was reached by British soldiers in 1781 with the help of Tory spies; Sarah Mather hid about 100 pounds of silver and clothing in a deep water well, but the British found those valuables and forced her to prepare a meal, though silver flatware hidden in a highboy chest dresser survived undiscovered. Considered one of the finest existing examples of 18th-century architecture, the wood-frame house has a central chimney, two stories, a basement, and an attic; its original rooms included a kitchen with a large cooking fireplace, a dining room and parlor downstairs, and two bedrooms upstairs, with later additions including a modern kitchen, more bedrooms, and a porch. Passed through six generations of the Mather family, the home was owned from 1906 to 1930 by Stephen Tyng Mather, an industrialist and great-grandson of Joseph Mather, who became the first Director of the United States National Park Service after helping secure its authorization by President Woodrow Wilson on August 25, 1916; under his leadership, parks and national monuments increased, criteria for adding properties were established, Park Rangers were created, and the U.S. park area doubled with additions including Grand Canyon, Bryce, Zion, Acadia, Hawaii, and Mt. McKinley (Denali) National Parks. In 1930 the homestead passed to his daughter Bertha Mather McPherson, one of Connecticut's first female architects and a founding member of the Darien Historical Society, who cared for the home and raised her family there. The home became a National Historic Landmark in 1964, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1966, was donated to the Mather Homestead Foundation in 2017, and now includes the original house, a caretaker's cottage, playhouse, sunken garden, and the Elizabeth W. Chilton Education Center built in 2020.

Photo: Devry Becker Jones (CC0)