Built in 1830 ? (was Dating 18th/19th century Details)

[gregV]

Jeremy,
Not seeing it, ..I mean the match. I see what looks to be a piece of oak (maybe chestnut) with a bead on it. Is there more then just this bead down the top edge? I tried to clean up the picture and thats all I see.

Greg

[jharkin]

I took a better photo with the real camera.

Its a piece of oak with a bead that matches the bead on my casings... but turns out now that I look at it more its too narrow . So maybe its nothing special after all - leftovers of some later work that they tried to match to the old trim.

[Alexander]

For the record your house is beautiful. The moldings and framing are just breathtaking. I love all that heavy construction it just screams " I am here to stay". I would love to be working on a house like yours it is like buried treasure at every turn.

Alexander

[jharkin]

Some more clues. The town historical society gave a talk on the old houses in town last night. It was a long slideshow and the town historian narrated the history of many of the more prominent houses that have been extensively researched.

Our house, being very small, was not in the group of well researched, but I did find one interesting photo of it that gave some clues. It turns out that in the 70s or 80s a group of architecture students did a housing stock survey in town. This is partially where all our circa sign dates came from (and many are wildly off). My house is in the set of photos under the category "colonial houses" (they also surveyed Federals, Greek Revivals, Victorians, etc).



Whats most interesting is the note that a previous town historian had studied the place. I will have to go dig through the society records and see what I can find. I know that the note calling it "Fitz house" is not 100% correct because I have the deed when he bought it in the 1850s and we know its older than that by the construction.

I did learn a lot about building trends in town. The society has lots of well documented cases of houses that were built with salvaged materials of older houses, barns etc that were town down. That could explain why we have floorboards that seem too wide/old for the 1800's with nails that are too modern for the 1700s. Also many documented cases of houses being moved all over the place (across town or just a few feet to accommodate road widening) and many houses burning and being rebuilt on the same foundation. There was a cool story of one house that was moved from the top of a hill all the way down to the center of town with log rollers and an ox team, and the sills broke as it was being pulled across the main street so it ended up sitting in the middle of a road for a month or two while they repaired it!

[cfisher057]

It's really quite amazing what they use to do with houses, of course, they didn't have zoning restrictions or utilities to disconnect.

I read one instance of a house in historic deerfield being jacked up 15 inches in 1816. Can you imagine? They just plugged in 16 inch timbers to fill the gap and the house is still standing ( and quite beautiful)

I thoroughly enjoy your updates. I am going through a similar process.

Best,
Chris

[James]

Lots of houses were moved in the old days. Of course they were mostly smaller. The legend with mine is that it used to sit closer to Swift Creek and was moved to its current location sometime prior to 1800 after a flood came to close. That is backed up by the fact that the house clearly has plaster ghostmarks, but no plaster. And the pine plank walls are(or were since most but not all have been off during the PO restoration to add insulation)held on with blacksmith made T head finishing nails. The construction under the stairs, and the surviving weatherboards(now in the enclosed porch space) have rose head nails. Floors used T heads like the walls. So can date the walls to pre 1800 but definitely had plaster at some point before that. Plaster apparently did not survive being hauled on logs across the field pulled by mules or ox. Hard to imagine moving it, but if the porchs had not yet been built it would only have measured 18 by 26.5 feet, so not that large. One contractor has speculated the roof was gable then, and the gambrel came with the repairs after the move. But since there are plaster marks upstairs, not sure if that is accurate or not.
Much of the history of these old places will never be definite, but an ongoing process of theories and questions. Shame no one thought to keep diaries and conveniently leave them stuck in the walls someplace. But the legends and guesswork make them much more interesting I think.

[melissakd]

There was a cool story of one house that was moved from the top of a hill all the way down to the center of town with log rollers and an ox team, and the sills broke as it was being pulled across the main street so it ended up sitting in the middle of a road for a month or two while they repaired it!

Awesome! Love this story.

MKD

[mfglickman]

Up the road from me there is a mid-1700s colonial in a 2 over 2 fashion - very nice house. A bit up the road from there is a smaller, late 1700's house, that doesn't really have a "style" - it's not a cape, not a colonial style, it looks like...an addition of some sort.

Talked with the historical society, one of whose members owns the "big" house, and came to find out that the little house was actually the summer kitchen addition to the big house...and due to some family issue or other, it was decided to move that addition up the road for Ma and Pa to live out their days...on their own! LOL.

I've wondered if my house were moved because it's situated backwards on its lot. But there's no evidence or documentation of that, and the foundations seem believable for the recorded age of the house.

Fun stuff!

Mary

[Don M]

Maybe the road use to run on the other side of your house & was later rerouted? There are a lot of old farmhouses in Carlisle that obviously didn't have residential roads running along side of them originally. The current residential suburbs of today were farmyards & fields originally for the original farmhouse. It's sometimes hard to imagine how things may have been arranged when the area was first developed.