From Original Settlers to 1930s Best-Selling Novelist

A stay at the Nehemiah Brainerd House Bed & Breakfast, 988 Saybrook Road, Haddam, offers you the best of both worlds.

You can revel in the charming ambiance of days long gone, yet still delight in modern-day comforts, like central air conditioning, wireless Internet and flat-screen HDTV. Not to mention the warm hospitality of your hosts, Jeffry and Maryan Muthersbaugh.

You can choose one of the four guest rooms in the 3,200-square-foot 18th-century house, or you can stay in the 800-square-foot guest cottage that is behind it. There’s wooden floors, antiques, gas fireplaces, a gas grill built into a stone fireplace for cooking outside, and spectacular views of the Connecticut River. 

And you’ll be treated to Maryan’s homemade breakfast, which her husband says is always fantastic. In the house, you need not be confined to the guest room, but are free to come into the living room and dining room, or go into the butler’s pantry to get a snack. Or play the piano that adorns the living room. Or sit on the sun porch or the patio.

And you can have your wedding, shower, rehearsal dinner, birthday party, or graduation party here.

Set on five acres of what can only be called “God’s country,” the house got its name from its original owner, Nehemiah Brainerd, who built the original post-and-beam part of the house around 1765, and who was part of a prominent local family.

In 1932, the well-known author Katharine Ingham Brush (who was born in Middletown in 1902) bought the house, moved it back from the road, added the wings, and changed the floor plan. She also built the cottage.

According to HGTV, Brush, called the "wicked lady novelist," had one of her books made into a racy movie, "Red-Headed Woman," starring Jean Harlow, which "barely made it past Hollywood censors when it was made."

Brush's obituary in Time Magazine June 23, 1952, read she was a "glamor-girl best selling novelist ... of the post-World War I speakeasy era ... A Boston movie critic at 17, she was twice married, twice divorced."

The Muthersbaughs bought the house in 2000, and turned it into a bed and breakfast a year and a half ago. It was in total disrepair, they say, but they bought it with the idea of fixing it up as their retirement home.

Living in Bethel at the time because of their jobs (Jeff owns an executive recruiting company and stays in their Bethel home three days a week), the couple completed the extensive renovations on weekends.

Maryan says she had always thought that she would eventually like to run a bed and breakfast, and when she lost her job as the director of human resources for a chemical company, she figured now was the time.

Before the house became a bed and breakfast, it had the honor of being featured on If Walls Could Talk, a 2006 show on HGTV which featured the home once owned by the illustrious Brush. Producers were also intrigued by what the couple found while renovating. 

Blueprints had revealed where there were now vinyl sliding doors there had been French doors. Jeff says that they wanted to put the original doors back in place, but couldn’t find them.

Then one day while he was walking about the property, he found them, intact, in a dilapidated shack. The couple had also found a safe in the basement that dated back to the 1850s, but couldn’t open it without the combination.

The show hired a locksmith to open it up, on camera, hoping for a dramatic find — but there was nothing inside.

The couple stays busy with a variety of guests from around the country and the world, and they love every minute of it.

“I’m a ‘people person,’” says Jeff. “I love interacting with the guests. This keeps the excitement in our lives. There’s always something new and new people. We love it here, but it’s so much nicer when you can share it with others.”

His wife agrees. “We have so much fun, sitting around the dining room table and laughing with the guests. We really get to know them, and it’s a lot of fun. I love the people. I like to decorate and cook. I like the whole deal.”

One particular guest stands out. He was a young German man, who, through a worldwide database, was chosen to donate bone marrow to a young boy in Haddam. Several years after the donation, the man arrived in town with his girlfriend to meet the boy and his family. They stayed at the Muthersbaughs’ bed and breakfast.

When Jeff told him he was amazed at what the man had done, he replied, “Why wouldn’t I do this? A boy was dying, and I was able to help.”

The couple has stayed in touch with this man (as with most of their guests) who wrote in their guest book, “You are the best bed and breakfast of the world, and we promise to come back.”