House on the Hill: The Story of the Ams Mansion

The story of the Ams Mansion has captured the imagination of many. Perhaps it is because its famous owner, Charles M. Ams, who failed to deliver manufacturing fame for Hebron, died May 25, 1930, only six months before the home was completed. Perhaps it is because Ams' wife, Amalia Elizabeth, died less than a month after her husband on June 21. Despite the fact that neither of the original owners ever lived in it, the mansion soon became the headquarters of a different vision and legacy of the Ams family.

John Sibun, in his 1975 book, Our Town's Heritage: 1708-1958, Hebron, Connecticut, reflected on the Ams Mansion: "To this day, it is impressively the largest house in town." At 5,272 square feet for the main house alone, it still holds this distinction in 2005.

The story really begins with Phineas W. Turner. Turner had been buying up the land on the south side of Hebron since the mid 1850's, and building a number of mills and factories. A post office was established, with P. W. serving as Postmaster. Even though Turner died in 1903 and his famous silk mills were defunct a few years later, the area was universally referred to as "Turnerville."

In a town that still refers to properties by the name of the original owner, that is tradition.

Charles Ams began his land-buying spree in 1912, almost ten years after Turner's death. It is a common misnomer that Charles Ams bought the Turner lands in Amston directly from Turner and his wife, Catherine. Land records in the Hebron Town Clerk's office reveal that Ams actually purchased the Turner lands and water rights from Israel Eisenstein and Daniel Brown on December 4, 1912. He also purchased adjoining tracts of land in areas that were technically Colchester and Lebanon; the transactions are recorded in the land records of those towns.

It didn't take long for Ams to start posting notices regarding "his" property. The collection of Paul Pomprowicz includes a notice in which Ams warned people "No hunting, no trespassing." basically "No Nothing" and signed it "Supt. Chas. M. Ams, Owner." But notice the linen poster states that the village name is "Turnerville, Conn." It appears from this artifact that Charles Ams wanted to quickly establish his authority in the south end of Hebron. Sometime in 1913, the village name, as well as the post office name, was changed to "Amston."

Caption: Original linen posting in which Charles Ams lays down the law about his newly-purchased lands. From the collection of Paul Pomprowicz.

The house that Ams built - seventeen years later - is a reflection of its owner. Despite the failure of Ams' company, Sterling Manufacturing (it was officially bankrupt in 1919), Charles Ams remained a businessman with grand dreams. He saw other possibilities for all the land he had purchased. The capstone of his legacy was appropriately a "mansion", which he decided to build around 1929, the same year his will was filed with the Hebron Probate Court. On June 17, 1929, he designated his wife, Amalia Elizabeth, daughter Irma Trubenbach, son Max Ams, and John Filsner, his friend, as Executors. On December 2, Ams added another friend, Morris Blau, as an Executor. Six months later, Charles died, followed the very next month by Amalia's passing.

The Executors filed paperwork with the Hebron Probate Court on May 4, 1931, listing the value of the land at $49,156, and the value of the improvements and buildings on the land (including the Mansion) at $62,000. From the inventory, we learn that Charles Ams owned many houses, including the Amston Inn. The Executors promptly paid the $1,443.04 to the State of Connecticut for "Inheritance Tax" on July 15 of that same year.

Ams' son, daughter, and friends appear to have known exactly what Charles Ams intended to do with the land. On September 9, 1931, "in consideration of the sum of one dollar and other valuable considerations received to our full satisfaction," they deeded the real estate to the "The Amston Lake Company, a Connecticut corporation of 109 Church Street, New Haven, Connecticut." The transfer was specific: "all the right, title, interest, claim and demand which the said Charles M. Ams had at the time of his decease or which we as such executors and trustees have or ought to have in and to all those tracts or parcels of land with the buildings thereon" was now in the hands of The Amston Lake Company.

Charles Ams, through his Executors and The Amston Lake Company, in essence became Hebron's first major developer. The Company was headquartered in the Mansion, which continued to be used as a "summer home" by family members for a number of years. Posters, such as those seen in the Pomprowicz collection, soon went up, with "Miss Amston Lake" promoting sales of small lots for a mere $89. The joys of summer leisure around the Amston Lake (formerly North Pond) were espoused, and soon people - many from out of state - were buying and building.

Caption: View of the Ams Mansion from the front porch of the Amston Inn. The trees in the center of the picture now obscure the view of the house from Church Street. Photograph courtesy of Paul Pomprowicz.

Caption: View of the Ams Mansion in 1937, during a demonstration of Hebron's new fire truck. The trees seen in the earlier picture have grown. Photograph courtesy of Paul Pomprowicz.

Today, there are over 400 homes and cottages on the lands that Ams bought. Most of them have been converted to "year-arounds", rather than just strictly summer homes, which had been Ams' original vision. The Ams Mansion was eventually sold, and has turned owners a number of times in the past forty years. In David Baber's 1978 inventory of historic properties in Hebron, conducted on behalf of the Connecticut Historical Commission, the house was listed as the "Ams Mansion," even though the owners at that time were the Ahlbergs.

The House on the Hill will probably always be known as the Ams Mansion. It's just tradition in Hebron.

The Hebron Historical Society thanks Carla Pomprowicz and Ann Hughes of the Hebron Town Clerk's office for providing most of the archival material used for this article.