Ten generations of the Hempsted family lived on this property, beginning with Robert, one of the first English settlers of what became New London. Robert's son Joshua built the western half of the frame house in 1678, and Joshua's grandson Nathaniel doubled its size in 1728, changing it from an end-chimney structure to a center-chimney Colonial. Joshua 2nd kept a diary from 1711 until his death in 1758, and together with the account books of his son John, it provides an exceptional record of daily life in colonial New London. That documentation, along with the family's long ownership, was vital to the house's restoration in 1957. Robert's great-grandson Nathaniel built the stone house on the corner in a center-hall gambrel style, probably with the work of French-speaking Acadians from Nova Scotia who were exiled in the 1750s. When the Joshua Hempsted House was built, it faced Bream Cove, and the early generations of Hempsteds were farmers whose fields and orchards occupied most of the land north and east of the house. Because the property was not near the waterfront docks and warehouses, it was spared when Benedict Arnold burned New London in 1781. In the nineteenth century, the family sold some of its outlying land for homes and businesses, and the old houses gradually came to be surrounded by an urban setting. The former Saltonstall School across the street was built in a Second Renaissance Revival style in 1903 during a prosperous and confident period in New London, when municipal leaders were making a sustained drive to modernize school facilities.