From The American Agriculturalist 16 (March 1857):60, found in
Sally McMurry's Families and Farmhouses in 19th Century America
If you own or love an 18th Century house, would not a house description, including owner, construction materials, number of stories and windows, dimensions and plot size, of every house in the 16 states that comprised the US in 1798, be of interest to you? The fear of war with the French caused such an inventory to be made. Sadly, only fragments survive. The inventories for Kent and Warren, CT, were rediscovered in 2004-2005.
Analysis of the housing stock revealed by these inventories came as a shock to Jack Larkin, chief historian of Old Sturbridge Village. He found that 2/3rds of houses in places like central Massachusetts were one story dwellings, much smaller than ever imagined, resembling the home of Farmer Slack, above left. He observes that the grand houses, the ones at house museums, comprised only 10% of early 19th Century housing, but because they tend to survive on the landscape, they dominate our image of New England.
Quickly tabulating the numbers of Big, Middling and Small houses illustrated in Sherman's venerable The Sentinel Houses (1978-Out of Print) confirms Larkin's observation. Of the roughly 50 houses shown and discussed in the book, more than half fall into the "Better Sort" category, while just a third represent the historically predominate small houses that were more typical, especially of marginal farming areas.
Fortunately for those of us whose love affair has been with smaller houses, such as mine with Hidden Hollow, the last 40 years have seen greater interest in vernacular architecture. The folklorist, Henry Glassie, has written a book of that title. Rather that focussing on monumental buildings or individual architects, vernacular architecture examines the patterns visible in common and anonymous building types. From these patterns, we can learn some things about houses like Hidden Hollow, and the TeeVan house, as I call it, around the bend in Hardscrabble Road. (It would still be wonderful, of course, to find the 1798 Direct Tax list of particulars for New Fairfield and Sherman.)
Both houses began as simple, one or one and 1/2 room, one story buildings, certainly in place before 1856, as they are shown on maps of that date. At that time they were occupied by related families, generations of the Osborns. The TeeVan house has some characteristics which indicate it may be the older of the two, namely a massive chimney and an orientation to the compass rather than the road. But both houses originally shared an asymmetrical arrangement of door and window. Glassie observed this pattern of half houses world wide: it allows the family to add a balancing addition at a later date. And that is precisely what the Osborns, who were carpenters, seem to have done. In the case of the TeeVan house, they appear to have conjoined two buildings to accomplish the symmetrical floorplan. At Hidden Hollow, the older section is made of ax-hewn visible post and beam and oak or chestnut boards; the new additions have pine flooring and no visible posts. Hidden Hollow's center chimney is just that, with only openings for stove pipes. If it ever had a massive hearth, it was removed.
To me, both houses were snug and comfortable, but perhaps living in them with a half or a dozen other people, as the Osborns, and later the Ingersolls, did in the 19th Century might have been a little too snug. As for Farmer Slack, he reminds me of the story that Lida Beckwith told of her husband saying her she was so slack, if he died first, she'd be in filth up to her waist. He did, and she wasn't!
No comments:
Post a Comment