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344 North Street 1840   By Eric L. Martin

This building provides a transition between the two areas documented herein, as it was originally constructed for a prominent Burlington resident but in the Old North End. Built in 1840 for Epriam Mills, by 1853 the house consisted of a two-story, brick block with a one-story, brick, rear wing. Mills, with his brothers Thomas and Samuel, owned a commercial building on the south side of Court House Square, in addition to 189 Church Street, and published the Burlington Sentinel newspaper (1). Following Epriam Mills' death in 1876, his widow, Sarah A., continued to reside here until her death in 1897 (2). The property then passed to her heirs, Byron M. and Delia W. Mills; Byron Mills, a carpenter, constructed a second story above the one-story brick wing and a one-story porch along the east side of the wing between 1900 and 1906 (3). After Delia Mills's death, Joseph A. and Eugenie S. Jordan bought the property in 1926 and rented it to Fiore Prudenzano, a tailor on Church Street; ten years later Fiore, and his wife, Angelina, bought the house, which had been divided into two apartments (4). By 1942, when Angelina died, the front entrance vestibule had been added, and Fiore married Sara Doria later that year; Fiore died around 1950, but Sara continued to run the Prudenzano Tailor Shop, located at 27 Church Street (5). In 1959 Sara Prudenzano sold the family home to Edward G., a construction worker, and Eleanore M. Cobb; for $16,500 they sold the property in 1966 to J. R. Thibault, who sold it four months later to Albert D. and Haxel M. Ayers for $22,000 (6). Two years later Mitchel H. and Adrienne M. Hamelin purchased the brick house for $27,500 and rented it out until selling it to James M. Galbicky in 1994 for $114,500; Galbicky sold the property to Matthew C. Mole in 2000 for $145,000 (7).