Photo courtesy of Northeast Private Client Group

The one-time summer estate of a Gilded Age swindler in East Haddam was acquired by a local investor for $2.03 million.

Located at 83 Main St., the Champion House was completed in 1782 and functioned as a private estate, inn and school before its conversion into 12 apartments in the 1940s.

The 11,265 square-foot mansion was owned in the 19th century by Fernand Ward, who orchestrated an investment scheme that bankrupted former President Ulysses S. Grant after he left office, and started a financial panic in 1884.

The latest buyer is Donald F. Tedford II of Lebanon, according to East Haddam land records. The property previously sold for $132,000 in November 1976, according to data compiled by The Warren Group, publisher of The Commercial Record.

Northeast Private Client Group’s Taylor Perun represented the seller and procured the buyer in the Nov. 21 transaction. The sellers completed extensive capital improvements in the past three years, according to Northeast Private Client Group.