[2] The Hicks-Stearns family house is a transition home, featuring a colonial-era kitchen and a Victorian-era parlor and furnishings.

[1] Collections include family heirlooms, cloth tea balls, Victrola, and faux bamboo furniture.

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.