At the time of the battle of Danbury, he mustered the Sharon militia and marched south to Danbury, pursuing the retreating British. The following year he commanded the Sharon men who hurried north to fight Burgoyne's Army and was in the engagement until the surrender.

In 1778, the prosperous Colonel Gay was chosen one of three in the county to purchase and secure arms, food and clothing for the Army. In the State archives are several fragmentary bills for guns and supplies bought by the Colonel, some for considerable amounts.

In 1768, Colonel Gay bought a part of the twenty-fifth home lot, where the Gay-Hoyt House is located. It was probably at this time, although definitely by 1774, that he commenced his mercantile business on this favorable site for a store and a house.

During the Revolution Sharon was prosperous and booming like Litchfield to the south. These western lands were a wilderness no longer, but humming with war business such as mining, gun making, the manufacture of saltpeter, nails and tools, beef and hog raising, and the farming of staple products such as wheat and corn. There was a continual coming and going, and exchange of ideas - along with rumor and gossip! As a merchant in those relatively prosperous pre-war days, Gay was well placed to take advantage of investment opportunities. Financially stable, he built his stately and dignified brick home in 1775. But fortune did not continue for Ebenezer Gay. He had to resign his commission in 1783 because of ill health. He was only fifty-eight. He died four years later in 1787, insolvent.

Meanwhile, the house had been mortgaged in 1785 to a New York merchant, Eleazer Miller, who had loaned Colonel Gay money to buy imported goods for his store. Towards the end of the war military activity that had brought prosperity to Sharon had moved to the south. After peace was established, business all but ceased. Colonel Gay, like many others, had invested heavily in land and soldiers' notes. Whatever the reason, we know that Mr. Miller took possession of the house for nonpayment sometime before Gay died.

In 1793 Issac Hunt bought the house and property from Mr. Miller, and it remained in the Hunt family until the death of Reuben K. Hunt in 1874. Over this long period, the house was principally known as the Reuben Hunt place. Mr. Hunt was a gentleman of generous and hospitable nature whose home was a rendezvous for his many friends.

Frederick Carter bought the property from the Hunt heirs in 1887 and lived there with his family until his death in 1908. His daughter inherited the property after the death of Mrs. Carter in 1924, and lived in the house, operating it for part of that time as a convalescent home, until she sold it to Anne Sherman Hoyt in 1937.

Miss Hoyt, from Cleveland, Ohio, and New York City, had long summered in Sharon before she bought "the Brick House," as she called it. Though not a native, her ancestors were from Connecticut and she felt at home here, entering into many phases of civic life in Sharon, a devoted and respected citizen. She served as president of the Sharon Historical Society from 1939-1948. Her activities were broad and her acquaintance with distinguished people reflected her intellectual and artistic interests. She served with the American Red Cross during World War I at several American bases overseas.

Reflecting the warm love she had for Sharon, past, present and future, her last generous act was to bequeath the Brick House to the Sharon Historical Society.

The House

The Gay-Hoyt House is considered a typical example of a Yankee village home of the better kind, built of brick rather than wood, with its central hall, end chimneys, conventional fenestration and room plan. The use of brick in Connecticut was never very common. The front and south walls are laid in Flemish bond, and the north and rear are so-called American. So strong was the Yankee tradition that instead of running the end walls above the gable end, as in Dutch houses, the overhanging sloping gable was preferred. The fine points are the interesting treatment of the window heads, the simple light over the front door with a slight arching of the brick work above. The string course was added to break the monotony of the wall surface and to mark the stories. The front porch is an addition, built a few years later than the house.

When trying to picture the house during its early years, don't forget that at that time, even in a village, the house was part of a farm, with barns, pig sties, beehives, wood piles, stables, and other outbuildings. Add to that the contents of the store operated by Colonel Gay, a store where every kind of dry goods was sold. Indeed a family's prosperity would be judged as much by the barns as the house. Today, the brick smokehouse remains as the last vestige of the exterior buildings once located in the rear of the homestead. An essential in its day, the smokehouse preserved meats for the household in the days before refrigeration.

It is fortunate that the Gay-Hoyt House has come down to us with so few changes. The interior of the house has been electrified and modern plumbing has been added. The original wood floors were replaced with modern wood floors in the early part of the 20th century, and at some point, the two south rooms on the first floor were opened into one by the addition of a colonial revival archway. Interior details which Ebenezer Gay would have considered a luxury remain as originally constructed, such as the fireplaces set at an angle in each room, with their arched openings and handsome paneling. This fireplace arrangement seems to have been the fashion during the 1770s. The original kitchen has disappeared, replaced by the ell - certainly a 19th century addition.