| Hicks-Stearns Family Museum | |
| Map Type: | USA Connecticut |
| Established: | 1978 (house built in 1788) |
| Location: | 42 Tolland Green Tolland, Connecticut 06084 USA |
| Coordinates: | 41.8714°N -72.3681°W |
| Type: | Historic house museum |
| Collections: | Family heirlooms |
The Hicks-Stearns Family Museum is a Victorian historic house museum located on the town green in Tolland, Connecticut. The house was built in 1788, when it served as a tavern. It was occupied by the Hicks family from 1845 until 1970.[1] Along with the Old Tolland County Jail and Museum, the Tolland County Courthouse, and the Daniel Benton Homestead, the Hicks-Stearns Family Museum is one of Tolland's four major landmarks.[2]
The Hicks-Stearns family house is a transition home, featuring a colonial-era kitchen and a Victorian-era parlor and furnishings. Collections include family heirlooms, cloth tea balls, Victrola, and faux bamboo furniture.[3]
The house's original owner was Benoni Shepard, a Congregationalist deacon and Tolland's first postmaster.[4]
The museum hosts tours, concerts, and holiday programs from May through December.[5]
The house's most prominent resident was Ratcliffe Hicks (1843-1906), eldest son of Charles Hicks, a successful merchant from Providence, Rhode Island, and Maria Stearns. Ratcliffe was a Brown University graduate (1864), successful lawyer and industrialist (president of the Canfield Rubber Works in Bridgeport), and Connecticut state legislator.[6] Ratcliffe renovated and expanded the family house with many Victorian elements, adding a front porch and a distinctive three-story tower.[7]
When Ratcliffe Hicks died in 1906, his will established a trust (worth a quarter of his estate) to start a school of agriculture and forestry in Connecticut. The school opened in 1941 as part of the University of Connecticut. UConn's Ratcliffe Hicks School of Agriculture and the Ratcliffe Hicks Building & Arena are named after him.[8]
Dedicated in 1951, UConn's Elizabeth Hicks Residence Hall is a women's dormitory named after Ratcliffe's daughter, painter and philanthropist Elizabeth Hicks (1884-1974).[9] Elizabeth willed the Tolland family home to a nonprofit trust to convert into a museum.