Finally, a collection of hotels as unique as you are.

Experience a collection of boutique hotels that celebrate their own uniqueness as much as yours. Luxuries that extend beyond the cookie-cutter hotel, with full-service amenities including restaurants that focus on fine dining, and customer service that offers surprises and delights around every corner.

New Hampshire:

Centennial Hotel - Eagle Mountain House - The Exeter Inn - The Wolfeboro Inn

Maine:

Breakwater Inn - Breakwater Spa - Beach House Inn - Yachtsman

Massachusetts:

Cranwell Resort Spa & Golf Resort - Orchards Hotel - Porter Square Hotel

Vermont:

Windham Hill Inn stagecoach from Manhattan), a bar for locals, and, before long, a rallying point for Revolutionary sentiment. Political loyalty in Ridgefield was divided in the 1770s, but Keeler was a staunch proponent of American independence and was rumored to be forging musket balls in his basement. Perhaps reacting to those rumors, British troops returning from a raid in Danbury fired their cannons on the inn on April 21, 1777, ripping into the building with enough velocity to move it on its foundation. One of those shots wedged itself in a corner beam, where it remains to this day, hidden beneath a removable square of siding, the defining exhibit.

This bit of history, and everything that followed, would have been lost had the Brits followed through on their plan to torch the inn. Some fast talking by Keeler’s uncle, a Tory sympathizer who lived next door—and downwind— saved it. “Later, his uncle expected thanks,” says local historian Charlie Pankenier. “But Keeler was reportedly having none of that, replying that he’d be damned if he’d ever thank a Tory for anything. He gave thanks to God and the north wind instead.”

In 1805, Keeler became the town’s second postmaster. The tiny post office that served the town for 50 years remains intact in what is essentially a cupboard under the taproom stairs. Upstairs, trav- elers’ bedrooms give a feel for the accommodations of the period, which included shared space on rope beds with reed-stuffed mattresses. Not all of the items in the museum are from the inn itself, but they’re typical of the furnishings it would have contained.

Passing from one generation of the family to the next, the business became W. Keeler’s Hotel, and then the Resseguie Hotel. During some restoration work, the journals of Anna Marie Resseguie, Timothy Keeler’s granddaughter, were discovered behind the kitchen’s beehive oven, a state-of-the-art innovation when it was added to “Esther’s Kitchen” in the 1790s. The Keeler Tavern Preservation Society published Resseguie’s journal in 1993. Her accounts of life during the Civil War are full of insight. “Her descriptions of battles and people are in many cases better than the newspapers’,” Pankenier says. “They’re a treasure.”

When the railroad came to Ridgefield in 1870, the town was “discovered” by wealthy New Yorkers. Among the new arrivals was architect Cass Gilbert, whose work included the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., and the Woolworth building in New York. In 1907, Gilbert and his wife bought the old Keeler Tavern. The Gilberts were the embodiment of the Gilded Age in Ridgefield, modernizing and expanding the house and gardens to accommodate larger, and more elegant, social gatherings. The house remained in the Gilbert family until 1957 and opened as a museum 10 years later.

Come for the cannonball—but stick around for the rest of the story.

132 Main St., Ridgefield, CT. 203-438-5485; keelertavern museum.org. See our picks for the best five sites of this period in New England history: Yankee Magazine.com/Revolutionary-War

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