April 8, 2014
This house is wary about you. It is set back from the road, quite a
distance, on a rise, so it looks down at you, or you look up at it. Yes, it has
door in the middle, flanked by windows on each side and one above. Clearly
that’s the place to go in. Still, especially
when you imagine this modern door with its fan light replaced by the original
plank one, you don’t sense that door saying, “Please come visit!”
Then there’s that blank wall to the left, and only one tiny
window on the 2nd floor. The right side is hardly better – more
windows, but still that stone wall around the whole first floor, solid, no
frills.
When I first passed by, I thought it was just an early stone
house built by the original Shaftsbury
settlers from Dover Plains, NY. The lack
of windows? Well, glass for window panes would have come by boat up the Hoosick
and Walloomsac Rivers, then up to Buck Hill Road by wagon. Glass would have
been expensive and hardly a priority for people who needed to provide food for
themselves.
Herbert Wheaton Congdon, in his ‘Old Vermont Houses’, published
in1946, wrote that Parker Cole built this building in 1770, as a farm house;
that it was used as a storehouse during the American Revolution.
Today we think it was intended to be a storehouse from the
beginning, similar to the one which was in Old Bennington, where the Monument
is today.
Here is why.
This house has no full basement, a necessary space for
winter food storage for families in 1770. It was built without a chimney, so
the building was not intended to be warm in winter. Its framing is more solid
than would be needed for a dwelling.
Was it a barn? No. Our early barns had a lower level facing
south into the sunshine to give farm animals warmth in the winter, shade in the
summer. There is no lower level here.
Most wagon doors on
early barns in this area faced north, opening onto the level above the animals
so that loading hay into a barn mid-summer could be done in the shade and the
hay stored just above where it is needed.
Wagon doors were also close to the road making for a short trip from the
hay fields.
The wagon door here faces south around on the back and opens
onto the main floor. It is out of sight, away from the road, allowing
inconspicuous, stealthy, delivery of food, hay, guns, ammunition.
The sturdy 2nd floor frame easily bore the weight
of those supplies.
This was a storehouse for munitions, built in anticipation
of war with England. It was set on the rise of the hill, aware of its
surroundings, to allow those inside to inspect anyone who approached. It was,
and is today, wary of you!
The storehouse has been a home for the Howard family since about
1850. Over the years as stewards they have seen most of the original frame. I
thank them for their care of the storehouse and for sharing what they
know.
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