Richard M. Bissell was president of The Hartford Fire Insurance Company for twenty-eight years. For part of that time the Bissell’s lived in the Clemens family home, which they purchased in 1903 for $28,800 and moved in shortly thereafter. Richard’s wife, Marie, was “a midwesterner who found Hartford society stuffy,” says historian Eugene R. Gaddis. “Even during Prohibition, champagne flowed liberally at her soirees, and on the morning after at least one party, a grand piano was spotted on her front lawn.”

Marie Bissell later became a patron of the legendary director of the Wadsworth Atheneum art museum, A. Everett “Chick” Austin, who in the 1930s brought the likes of Gertrude Stein, Piet Mondrian, and George Balanchine, to Hartford. The Bissell’s raised three children in the home: William, Richard Bissell Jr., and Anne-Caroline. William kept a pet alligator in the Clemenses’ conservatory. After spending his childhood in the Clemens home, Richard Bissell Jr. went on to work for the Central Intelligence Agency and was responsible for major actions including the Bay of Pigs Invasion. He is viewed as one of the most significant spies in CIA history.