HANNAH JUMPER'S HOUSE REVISITED!

YOU WON'T BELIEVE YOUR EYES!

Hannah Jumper house in better days.

If you haven't read my blog post called "Hannah Jumper's House by the Sea" dated September 22, 2017 maybe you should take a look at that before proceeding with this post.  The original post has had a huge number of viewings and comments so I know you will be interested in what happened next.

The September post left with the house a precarious looking shell.  Was it too far gone to save?  "Not at all", said an expert who looked at it and still found much to recommend it for preservation.

A huge problem was that the house had virtually no cellar and was just a humble cottage sitting right on the ground; sills, if there were any, left right in the dirt.  It needed a foundation because it had never had one if you can imagine.  How did it last for nearly 300 years with its sills right on the dirt and its additions practically sitting on the seawall with rough waters in the harbor lapping at it?

So it was determined that there must be a foundation built if the house was to remain and be preserved.  Our friend, Jim, the expert, suggested a company from out of town capable of performing the work.  Building a foundation meant that the house had to be raised up.  That made perfect sense but I never imagined just how high it would be raised.

I had not been back to the Rockport site for quite some time during this busy time of year.  But yesterday I was going to attend a nearby Christmas party and knew it was the perfect time to take a look at the progress and take some pictures.  

There have been extremely strong winds blowing around here lately and several had mentioned to me that they feared for the house in its more than fragile state and worried about collapse.  

It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words so without further adieu here are the photos taken December 17th. 

Here is Hannah Jumper's house high and dry with the blue waters of Rockport harbor plainly visible.

What a shocker.  I couldn't believe my eyes.  The house was all but blowing in the breeze!   The height to which it had been lifted was astonishing.

As is now plainly seen the right hand end of the house was clearly added to the original center chimney cape built circa 1738, only 20 years shy of being 300  years old.

It would seem as though there is not enough left to save.  Notice the old wood shingles on the roof that had been covered with asphalt shingles in modern times.

Looking at the addition from this angle it does appears that perhaps this added on building may have  been a barn.  It is also obvious that a door was crudely patched over when the other door on the left was added.

If you look to the right of the Hannah Jumper house you will see another old house that appears to be ripped apart.  This was the antique home of a prominent Rockport artist who passed away recently.  The Rockport Historical Commission called in the expert in time to head off mistakes that were about to be made in the restoration/remodeling of this antique house.

It does seem that we haven't seen the final chapter to this story.  And I hope not.  Fingers crossed  that the final chapter will not be of the house collapsing during a storm into the harbor.  I will keep you posted and let's hope it survives the northeast storms of the winter.  Rockport can't escape enduring some rough weather in the winter. 

After the blizzard

Quickly reproduced and back to normal  

Here is the sad picture of Motif # 1, Rockport's famous red fish shack as it slowly toppled overboard into the harbor during the famous blizzard of 1978.  It was quickly reproduced and folks have almost forgotten that the much painted shack is not the original built in 1840.

 The Hannah Jumper house looks pretty frail but maybe those huge framing beams from which it was built so long ago can withstand a little more abuse before the house is stabilized on its new foundation.

I wish I could hang a Christmas wreath on the front door to show that we care but that is impossible.  The door is now out of reach and being on the short side I would need a ladder.  And being well aware of the reputation of the Rockport police who don't miss a trick, I would never get away with it.  But I do hope the new year is a better one for Hannah's old house.

Merry Christmas to all readers of my blog, many of whom are doing their part toward saving our architectural heritage.  

To be continued!

Pru

LITTLE ANTIQUE CAPE, LOST AND FOUND Part 2

This post will be brief compared to recent posts but I have some more information about the old cape and its odyssey around New England.

It was 1988 when the Kenyon's abandoned the idea of getting the little house put back together for their new home.  They had built their new post and beam house on their land in Gloucester so they advertised the old cape for sale all numbered and ready to go for $19,500.  It was advertised in Maine Antique Digest.  Obviously, it didn't sell.  I would guess that at the time of the advertising it was in the cellar of the new house which is where I saw it for the last time.

It was finally sold to Tom Farmer from Falmouth, Maine.  The Kenyon's had taken it from Massachusetts to Northport Maine in a school bus.  Tom Farmer probably had it for quite some time but that is just a guess.

The new owner bought it from Tom Farmer  as recently as the spring 2014 and they moved it to Casco, Maine a distance of 35 miles.They had looked at it in the previous fall of 2013 but did not buy it at that time.

Here is Cheryl, the owner, in front of her fireplace mantle
that was salvaged from another house in Massachusett.

In 2014 Tom Farmer revealed that it was about to be moved to Ohio.

Others had hesitated to buy it because the Kenyons had marked all of the pieces with oil based paint.  Potential buyers must have thought the removal would be a problem.  Cheryl, the new
owner bought a Quonset hut in which to store the old house and the rest went into her cellar.  Like deja vous for the traveling house.


Cheryl belongs to a reenactment group where she depicts the 1760’s - 1820’s with the Ancient Ones of Maine (a living history group)

Here is what she said about her purchase and what she did with itl

"I was in love with the gun stock posts so they were high on my priority list. In the end I needed a garage/barn more than I needed a full size Cape so I opted to build a barn and a mudroom addition onto my retirement home. The mudroom was made using various parts of the Georgetown Cape."

So now the work began using the parts of the old house.

"The mudroom was made using as many of the gunstock
posts as I could! The ceiling was made w boards from the Pine trees removed to make way for the barn and mudroom.

Heavy framing, gunstock corner.  Is that a chamfer on the beam?  Great gunstock post.

The wainscoting boards were about 22” wide and the mop board is 12” tall.
You can see the painted labels on the beams. I left them visible to reflect part of the history. I am not sure if the posts are oak or chestnut but they sure are heavy and solid!

"A friend and I plastered the walls. It is still a work in progress but I have no immediate plans to do any but use the room as is! I hope to incorporate other parts into my home as time goes on."

Wide sheathing boards with layers of paint.

Wide Boards from Georgetown

When it didn't seem as though the cape would be re-erected in its entirety, Cheryl made good use of many of the parts and will collectively use more as time goes on and other uses come along

Newly constructed barn.

A new room but showing plenty of antiquity.

Potting shed using some old material from the Georgetown cape.

This is where I will end for now but if I can possible get one of the earlier names on the house from its old location I will endeavor to discover its history going backward rather than going forward as we have be doing.

I hope you enjoyed the strange tale of the old Cape from Tenney St. in Georgetown, MA.  The final photo is of the entire property.  It's all here, not in its original form but utilized and loved.  That's what is important.  It is a miracle that any of it survived after thirty years "on the road"

Winter in Maine!

OLD HOUSES THREATENED BY FADS

                                                    HAVE YOU NOTICED THESE TRENDS?

Times are changing!  Antique houses and historic building are in jeopardy. Here are examples of what is impairing them, some much more serious than others.  If only cosmetics are involved...OK.  When original fabric is involved it is not so OK.

For nearly fifty years I have gone on antique house tours from Maine to Florida and elsewhere in between.  They followed the same scenario.  Visitors were greeted at the front door and admired the hall and staircase before being directed into the front rooms.  The visitors admired traditional parlors usually with a fireplace, a Chippendale sofa, wing chairs and Martha Washington lolling chairs.  Oriental rugs covered the floor; swags and jabots adorned the small paned windows.

In the dining room the table was usually set fit for a queen with the fine china, sterling silver tableware and maybe some Waterford crystal glasses.  Sometime you were allowed upstairs and sometimes not but the entire first floor was on display.  Often less formal country kitchens welcomed you to the rear of the house.  Occasionally  there was an antique cast iron Glenwood or Crawford range or cook stove that was the pride of the homeowner especially if it could be used.  Butcher block was often the counter of choice in an old house kitchen.

After many years of being inspired by lovely and interesting houses, not all of them as formal as I just described I would return home; sometimes inspired and other times with feelings of hopelessness, thinking everything I owned in my house had to go.

Once when I lived in Newburyport, MA my own house was on a tour.  It was a lot of work but heart warming too as people admired things and for a number of years afterwards when I would be introduced to someone they would remark about things they had seen in my house and remembered.  It was mostly a positive experience.

After so many years of touring I became less eager to go.   Maybe it was really my worn out knees and I didn't want to admit that all of the stairs and in and out of the car were killing me.

Recently, for the first time in years I agreed to go on a tour of mostly antique houses.  Some of the houses I was familiar with and others I would be seeing for the first time.

As a friend and I approached the first house we were directed around to the back of the house but with lovely landscaping it was a treat.  When we entered the house we had to take off our shoes which was not a treat but a real pain.  I had not worn shoes that I could kick off easily but I complied.  We then entered the kitchen.  Treacherously shiny, slippery floors greeted us.  But here is the thing.  We were in the kitchen!  The back wall of the house had been opened up and an addition built in the rear.  We were in a huge space with the best of everything relative to cabinetry, appliances and granite counter tops.  This was the centerpiece of the house.  The dining room and parlor were anti climactic after seeing the "swell" kitchen.  

Both my friend and I were bored with the house.  It had lost its patina.  If I hadn't known better I would have thought I was in a reproduction house.  It was pristine!  And was billed as a 17th century house which it was not.  The given date would have made it one of the five oldest houses in America.  Not!

We continued on to the second house.  Once again we were shuffled around to the back door.  What was going on?  More of the same.  Walls had been removed to create the ultimate kitchen.  Everything was expensive and sparkling.  What the parlor and dining room looked like I hardly noticed.

On to the next house and  the same scenario again.  In the back door, walls removed to create a large space,  appliances nearly commercial grade.  Was this the quaint old house I had always admired?

We didn't finish the tour.  It was disturbing to hardly recognize these houses with their shiny surfaces, not an imperfection to be found.  How can that be in an almost three hundred year old house?

Open spaces, missing walls, and scraped, sanded and polished spaces are in.  Guests enter by the kitchen door because the enlarged kitchens have taken center stage.  Antique houses are being threatened by this latest craze.  As I predicted elsewhere, the day will come when the hostess or the housewife will get tired of everyone hanging around her while she prepares a meal and surely closed kitchens will have their day once again but how much damage is being done? Sanded and urethaned floors and expensive stoves with enough burners to run a restaurant are the style of the day!  If that's what you want, folks, build a repro.

The experience was disturbing and I came home, not feeling inspired, but feeling troubled.  The houses is saw could have passed for repros and I wished that the owners had built themselves new houses and left their antique houses alone.

I must not leave out the fad for exposing beams in the ceiling never supposed to be seen by human eyes once the house is built.  Old time housewrights must be rolling in their graves to see their rough adzed beams being displayed in an otherwise nice room.  Most houses were not rustic cabins but refined houses.  I covered that subject in a blog post recently and there was an unprecedented number of readers and responders.  Here is the link to that blog post in case you didn't see it.

https://prudencefish.blogspot.com/2017/08/beams-beams-and-more-beams.html

A fairly formal dining room but where is the plastered ceiling?  These crude beams were not meant for human eyes.

Another threat to old houses presents a much more serious dilemma.  It is lead paint.

For many years removing lead paint posed more of a threat than leaving it alone.  

Anyone born in the late 1970s or before has probably been exposed to lead paint.  New England houses are very apt to be a lot older then the 70s.  I have not been very sympathetic to those calling for the removal of lead paint in our houses.  It is disruptive, expensive and is a real threat to antique houses.  I have sincerely doubted that children were chewing on any part of the house.  It has always seemed to me that painted furniture or other old or antique objects that people have lying around or accessorizing their homes were much more apt to be the culprit.  A toddler might bite on the arm of a chair or any antique ornament on a low table such as families of old houses collect.

I just heard that a family I know with a precious one year old baby have discovered that the baby has elevated lead levels.  These are very conscientious parents and they also love their 200 year old house.  They are going to be moving out of their house for six weeks while their lovely old center chimney house has all traces of lead paint removed.  This is drastic and tragic for the interruption in their lives and the assault on their house and the expenditure.  But I understand the pressure they feel to remove harmful elements from their baby's environment especially if the state gets involved.

This couple think that the threat is coming from the painted floors.  When I mentioned the situation to a friend whose middle aged children are the same age as mine her immediate response was that we kept our kids in playpens and they didn't crawl around on the floors.  And most rooms had some sort of rug.  I really hadn't thought about play pens and if they are no longer in use why not?  Checking online I see that they are available.  Since these days I am not usually in houses with babies I'm curious if there has been a decline in the use of playpens as my friend suggests leaving more babies to crawl around on the floor investigating their surroundings.

Children must be protected but deleading an entire house is a drastic measure.  Perhaps I don't know how many children have high levels.  Surely most of us and most of our kids if born before lead paint was outlawed didn't even consider that our children were in jeopardy and I'm not convinced that they were.  Would it not be more likely that a child would mostly be apt to put an object in their mouth that they could pick up and hold in their hands?  Any object that is painted could be a culprit.  And what about novelty items that have come from other countries and sold here that aren't antique?

Once a child has been diagnosed something drastic has to be done and it is somewhat out of the homeowner's hands.  Going the route of encapsulating the painted surfaces seems a better way to go but perhaps there is no choice once the state is involved.

There is another threat to an old house and it doesn't have to be that old!

Everywhere I go I can usually see an insulator's truck parked at yet another house that is getting insulation blown into the walls.   Without a vapor barrier which old houses do not have the home owner could be headed for trouble down the road.  Without a vapor barrier the insulation gets wet, holds water and becomes a soggy mess and it's just a matter of time until it starts to impair the integrity of the framework of the house as the wood is constantly exposed to the wet insulation.

A house with no vapor barrier and no insulation is able to breath.  We have huge numbers of old houses in New England that might not still be here if they had blown-in insulation suffocating them.  One inspector claimed that 80% of the houses he inspected with blown in insulation had damage.  

This guy is insulating an attic floor.  That is good.  Walls are bad.

Another current trend is only temporarily detrimental because it is cosmetic.  It is when changes can't be reversed that there real trouble.  Here I'm talking about wallpaper and that obviously is cosmetic and not really damaging to the house.

By the 19th century there were numerous paper stainers and wallpaper was readily available.  Here in New England in the 19th century wallpaper decorated most rooms.  I have been told that in warmer climates there is an insect problem with wallpaper and  its paste thus not seen in the South as frequently.  

Wallpaper, for the most part, is out of favor.  It has been replaced by white paint throughout the house.  Not only is this not accurate treatment in an old house but it is boring. "Less is More" promoted by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in the 20th century has nothing to do with period decorating in an old house.  The white on white treatment has found its way into the decorating fads of the our country perhaps in part inspired by HGTV.  I will be so glad when this fad becomes history which it will.

Here is a wallpapered room in Hamilton House in South Berwick, Maine.  What could be more charming.  No white walls here.  I love this room!

White paint prevails everywhere.

There is one other color in vogue that you may not have heard of but it is making a fashion statement these days in houses of all ages and styles.  The word is"griege" It is defined like this.

The name might sound exotic, but greige is actually an amalgamation of two words; gray and beige. Most shades of greige are stronger on the gray than beige. But if you look closer, you will notice brownish undertones merging with the neutral gray color.

So now  you know what greige is, but will you know it when you see it?

But here is what is really getting my dander up these days!  Three times in the last week or two while looking at listings of antique houses for sale I have been floored by broker comments.

These listings describe beautifully the features and details of  what appear to be great "turn-key" houses until you get to the last sentence in the description.  "This house needs total renovation"  That is the conclusion of the broker for the house at  325 Main St. in historic Concord, MA and the same sentiment expressed for a beautiful brick house built at 1 Metcalf St. in Worcester, MA in 1939.
Here they are.

Concord, MA 1767

"Bring your creative eye...this property needs a complete renovation."  says the listing.  What in the world are they talking about.  A kitchen island with granite?

Worcester, MA 1939

 "A Total Rehab"  claims the listing agent.  Does total rehab mean sanding a couple of oak floors and taking down some faded wallpaper?

Gloucester, MA, Mid 18th century

"Raze the existing dwelling and rebuild upon 13,000 square feet"  proclaims this Gloucester listing.  This house is tired but does it have to be bulldozed?  It is an historic house.  To read more about Cape  Ann Cottages, follow this link.

https://prudencefish.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-18th-century-cottages-of-cape-ann.html

This has to be just the tip of the iceberg.  What a senseless attack on our inventory of traditional and antique houses.  When the "throw away society" that we live in comes down to throwing away significant houses something needs to be done.

For a long time I ran classes for real estate "professionals" trying to educate them to recognize period styles and how to go about selling them.  I reached a lot of people but it wasn't enough and what they learned didn't always stick.  And with the high attrition rate of real estate brokers many of the ones I did reach have moved on to other careers or retirement.  If you sell cars or pots and pans you have to know your product.  Not so in the real estate industry.  Just about everything else involving the sale of the house takes priority over the age and the history.  Misrepresentation is rampant when it comes to describing the house and particularly dating the house.

The Concord house comes with this glowing description before the announcement, the grand finale, that it needs complete renovation.  Read this about the house:

Offered for the 1st time since 1949 & paired w a generous 3/4A lot coupled w a Concord Ctr location, this Samuel Jones House c. 1767 provides exciting opportunities to bring a pure, unspoiled antique gem back to life. Tracing its roots to the dawn of Independence, this property is steeped in history (see attachment). Residents include famed poet & journalist William Ellery Channing, friend & 1st biographer to Henry David Thoreau as well as Franklin Sanborn, educator & ardent abolitionist who offered safe passage to fugitive slaves along the Underground RR. Current owners have painstakingly restored the house to reflect its original roots. Hndmade nails & hardware, original millwork, exposed beams, charming window seats, built-in cabinet & striking raised paneling over fp. Bring your creative eye...this property needs a complete renovation. Possible 2nd dwelling exists w approvals. 

I am not even going to start in on the subject of replacement windows and the ensuing damage to the integrity of the antique house.  This could be called a scam.  They have no business being installed in an antique house.  Windows could be the entire subject of a post maybe left for another day.

So don't get taken in by these fads and trends.  They will pass and you don't want to be left with an impaired house because some salesman talked you into insulation or new windows.  As I have already said, if you succumb to a fad that is reversible no real damage is done.  It is when original fabric is removed that changes become more serious.

Meanwhile, what can we do to stop this craziness and what do people really want in an old house.  Or in their heart of hearts maybe they don't even want an old house with its inevitable idiosyncrasies.

Enjoy the quirkiness of your old house, protect it and do thorough homework before you make changes.  And when you are no longer comfortable living in an antique with creaking floorboards and steep staircases, and not really devoted to that lifestyle,  give yourself permission to move on to something that is more to your liking.  



Post Script

Shocker of the day!  They seem to be turning up everywhere.  Once again, this is from Concord, MA, one of America's most historic towns, not only from its role in the Revolution ("the rude bridge that arched the flood")  but also for its literary contribution to America.  Henry David Thoreau,  Ralph Waldo Emerson,  Louisa May Alcott, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow who didn't live in Concord but memorialized the 19th of April, 1775 in "Paul Revere's Ride".  These greats are associated with  Concord and are the names that quickly come to mind when you think of this town.

This fine house is priced at $1,565,000

The real estate ad describes it like this:

"Majestically sited on 2 buildable lots, this iconic Concord property is yours to renovate or start from scratch with your visionary design."  The price tag is $1,565,000.  

LITTLE ANTIQUE CAPE, LOST AND FOUND Part 1

THE LITTLE HOUSE THAT COULD

"This house has more miles on it than my 26 year old Saab Convertible!"

These were the words spoken by someone who had just heard the story of this old house for the first time. You will also be dumbfounded by the strange odyssey endured by this tired house, so quaint and charming; that had stood for so many decades by the side of a country road, with its big chimney in the middle until so-called progress intervened.  The incredible journey of the house goes like this.

Tiny antique cape that formerly stood on a large lot of
land at 107 Tenney Street in Georgetown, way out in the country.

In the 1970's and into the 1980s an old man lived with his dog in the little house according to a friend who lived nearby.  She used to stop to talk to the old man but was never inside his house.

By 1985, the owner, assumed not to be the old man, no longer wanted it and the house had to go.  Enter Mark Phillips.

Mark Phillips was a fire fighter in West Peabody but with plenty of time off and with a passion for old building materials he roamed the countryside looking for run down, empty houses where he could get salvage rights to the old material.

Mark discovered the old house on Tenney St. in Georgetown, MA and obtained the rights to the house only, not the land.  I'm not sure how long Mark Phillips tried to sell the entire house himself but eventually he listed the house with me, a Realtor, in nearby Ipswich who specialized in selling historical or antique houses.  This all happened in 1985 so the details are a little fuzzy after more than thirty years.

This ad for the old house must have appeared
somewhere but I don't know where.  Perhaps
it was in the Maine Antique Digest.

The house was shabby but had some integrity as an antique with a large center chimney and three fireplaces, one of which was a fairly large cooking fireplace with a bake oven.  It appeared to have all of its original pieces and parts but in a sad condition.  From one of the photos it appears to have had a small building behind it that looks like a "ten footer". It had already been torn down by the time I got there. 

Ten by ten (or similar) shoe shops dotted this neighborhood in the Georgetown and surrounding area where people in outlying neighborhoods supplemented their incomes by working on shoes for the Lynn shoe industry especially in the winter.  In fact, my friend who lived around the corner had a ten footer in her yard which was taken and saved by the local historical society.  By the time I saw the house there were no outbuildings remaining.  They had already been demolished.

(If you love old building take a look at these ten footers that dotted the landscape in Essex County, Massachusetts.) 
  
http://primaryresearch.org/ten-footer-shoe-shops-of-essex-county/

So the salvage man advertised the house with no results before he listed it with me.  It was just prior to the summer of 1985.

I was known for being the broker more interested in saving old houses than looking for the big commissions so I took the listing for this house.  I don't remember the price but it was well under $10,000.  I certainly didn't list it in anticipation of a big pay day.

When buyer brokerage first came into New England a broker in my office said, "Pru doesn't work for the buyer or the seller.  She works for the house."  I guess there was a kernel of truth in that because I sold the oldest, the shabbiest and most interesting houses finding satisfaction researching their history, giving them an identity and in locating a buyer who would breath life back into these old wrecks.  

Along came Peter Kenyon from Gloucester.  He had a house lot in a beautiful spot in the Annisquam section of Gloucester on which he dreamed of re-erecting the old cape.  He would spend the summer dismantling the house with the help of his family especially his school aged sons.

The sale took place and the Kenyons proceeded with the task of taking down the house. with a deadline of August 30th to have the house removed.  It was a family project.

The Bill of Sale for the house in lieu of a Deed because there was no
land involved in the transaction.  It became personal property.

Because they were buying just the house with no land it required a Bill of Sale for personal property rather than a deed.  It was legally the Kenyon's house now and had to be removed by them.

They worked diligently on the project carefully identifying and numbering each and every piece of the house which they removed.  I have no memory of where they stored the pieces and parts of the house but the following photos will give a idea of what went on and how they identified the pieces of  the house with their floor plan to assist when it was re-erected.

Peter Kenyon working on the house.

From time to time I would swing by in my travels to see how the work was progressing.  On some of these visits I dug up old peonies and Solomon's Seal that were growing in the yard, evidence of better days when someone cared about the house.  I still have those perennials.

The job was completed and I didn't hear anything for perhaps a couple of years.  That is when I learned that the Gloucester building inspector refused to give the Kenyons  a building permit for building a house with old material.  They were shot down!  They had a lovely lot and a quaint house but the dream of the antique house on this piece of land was never to be.

The Kenyons did what was about the only thing they could do.  They built a new post and beam cape on the lot.  It had a central chimney and 9 over 6 windows.  It was also much larger than the antique cape but not what they had planned.

They gave me a tour of the new house and there in the new basement, high, dry and safe were the pieces and parts of the old cape.  That was the last time I ever saw the house.

They later told me that they planned to take it to Maine where they could rebuild it without facing the problems they faced in Gloucester.

Plan of the antique cape formerly at 107 Tenney St., Georgetown, MA. You can see the labels on every piece to correspond
with the labeling on the actual piece so that the house could easily be put back up with every piece accounted for.

Near the entrance door you can see the debris fromoutbuildings that were demolished and not saved.
It looks as though a ten footer shoe or cordwainer's shop was lost in the demolition. 
(I just noticed the old knife box on the right, or is it a box for carpenter's tools?)

Here is a view of one of the front rooms after it was stripped or as we usually say, "gutted".

This mess is, I believe, the kitchen cooking fireplace with evidence of a bake over on the right.

A year or so ago I joined a private Facebook group called Colonial Home Owners.  Many people post stories about working on their own antique houses, seeking advice or calling attention to great houses for sale.  

Recently a member of Colonial Home Owners from Maine submitted information about part of her old house reconstructed from an old cape from Georgetown, MA.  I quickly contacted her saying that I thought it probably was the house I had sold thirty two years ago.  She was doubtful that it was the same house but would search for the photos and documents she had saved.

After she located her old saved photos and documents there was no question.  It was the little cape taken down in Georgetown so many years ago.

A sheathed partition interior wall separating rooms.

This view, probably the old parlor shows that it had
wainscoting  in addition to a wide mop board.

Continuing this strange odyssey of the traveling house, it turns out that the Kenyons had packed the pieces of the house in an empty school bus and drove the house to Northport, Maine. Here Peter Kenyon began de-nailing and cataloging the house until suddenly interrupted when Ann Kenyon developed health problems.  The project was abandoned.

From wherever it was at that point it was now moved to a barn in Falmouth, Maine where it remained until seen by our Colonial Home Owners member, Cheryl Wilson Callahan.  Why did it need to be rescued right at that time?  Believe it or not it was in danger of being taken to Ohio.

Another bizarre twist to the story of the house is how  Cheryl, the present owner discovered it?  Are you ready for this?  It was listed on Craig's List, of all places, under "Salvage!"  and purchased from a middle man named Tom Farmer.

Thanks to the present owners the poor old thing was spared the insult of being uprooted to the mid West and has remained on New England soil where it belongs!

Now you know why another Colonial Home Owners member was moved to say,  "This little house has more miles on it than my 26 year old Saab Convertible!"   

To which I responded, "No kidding!"  Who else can say their house was salvage on Craig's List?

Like the "The Little Engine That Could" if these walls could talk they would be saying, "I think I can.  I think I can."

The story of the house now moves on to the final chapter in the hands of its new owners.




I hope, with the help of the present owner, I will be able to post again perhaps with photos and a story or two from the owners that rescued it.  Here is what Cheryl, the owner, said about the house,
"Unfortunately some parts were gone so it was not practical to put it back in its entirety... but it is still loved today!"

To be continued as a new post or a post script!

Thanks for reading,

Pru