Our Rural Heritage: The Village

Town historian Bob Burgoyne’s 2002-2003 series “This Old Hill” describes a “street that was nearly barren” when the meeting house was built in 1723, with an inn, and no more than two or three homes. Subsequently, the hill experienced three periods of development: 1750 – 1760, 1815 – 1820, and 1830 – 1835. An impressive history accompanies this growth. Two houses served as a governor’s residence, two were captain’s houses, two were the subjects of books, one was the birthplace of a famous artist, a few served as doctor’s offices, a few as stores, one as a hospital, two as parsonages, one as a library, another as a cooking school, a bed and breakfast, an inn, and a hotel.

The house facing south at the top of Hammond Hill was the original parsonage for the first minister, William Billings, who served from 1723 to 1733, and the second, Reverend Samuel Moseley. Billings’ estate in 1733 lists a “Farm & House” for 600 pounds, along with the following items and their worth: clothes, books, horse, stock, furniture, cloth, yarn, flax, bedding, brass, pewter, iron, and an Indian Girl. It’s possible, Burgoyne opined, that the pre-1733 portion is the northern part of two structures on independent foundations. With its later construction, this mansion is one of the most impressive on Main Street.

The structure known as the “Chelsea Inn” was one of the first structures on the street and the first of the town’s inns. In Folklore and Firesides, Susan Jewett Griggs suggests that this “public house” was established prior to 1731 due to references of “inebriated brethren” who were “brought before the Church” after indulging in “strong drink” served “on the highway”. Clark’s journal reports that when the meeting house was rebuilt in 1754, the original structure was moved across the street to continue to serve as an inn for the next 70 years. This older building was torn down in 1824 and rebuilt to look far differently than the original and current structure, and would continue to serve visitors for over 100 years. The tiny structure next to it was a tea house called “the Nutshell”.

It was not uncommon for buildings to be pulled by oxen across frozen fields to new locations. Such was the case with the second village house, built prior to 1738 on Parsonage Road, and transported to its present site on the corner of Main Street and Cedar Swamp Road. Similarly, the house which was the birthplace of the famous deaf and mute portrait artist, John Brewster , Jr., built prior to the 1759 survey of the road, was situated too far into the right-of-way, and was transported in 1830 to its present location at 227 Main Street. The house on the northern corner of Main Street and Old Route 6 West bears little resemblance to its 1761 beginnings. The 1830 remodeling in the American Empire style, complete with stately pillars and ornate cornices, was accomplished when Governor Chauncey Cleveland resided there.

Thomas Steadman Jr., who in 1754 replaced the original meeting house with the current structure, built the home north of the Congregational Church in 1790. The Taintor residence was the subject of the New York Times best-selling All Our Yesterdays, A Century of Family Life in an American Small Town, published by owners and authors Jim and Janet Robertson in 1993. The house north of that was probably also built by Steadman in 1791 for his sister, Patience, and her husband, Captain Daniel Fuller, a “town house” for the wealthy land owner whose farm extended to Edwards Road. In 1798, Steadman would give his son, Griffen, a half an acre parcel containing a new dwelling. This included the small plot where the General Store is still sited, the first version built in 1821, and the apartment house next to it, which we call the “Guild House” for the owner, from 1890 to 1915, who, though not a physician, was apparently adept at caring for patients, as the 1798 dwelling served as a sort of hospital or nursing home.

Another famed builder, Jonathan Clark, surveyor and abolitionist, built the Captain Tweedy home in 1801, and in 1820, the next house north, where Brewster’s sister Betsey and her husband Joseph Prentis lived. In spite of the twenty years between them, “an observer with an eye for detail can readily see that the Tweedy house and the Prentis house are the work of the same artisan,” Burgoyne noted.

In between the building of these grand structures, there was much construction in the village. Clark built the house at 289 Main Street, still called “The Misses Pearls”, in 1814. Prior deeds show this parcel “with a blacksmith shop standing in the highway”. The blacksmith shop disappears from these deeds, yet its positioning, south east of the property, suggests that when it was necessarily moved from the middle of the road, it became part of the property across the street at 276 Main. Clark’s 1858 survey identifies this turn-of-the-century structure as C. C. Button’s grain pantry, noting a wagon shop and another small shop which might have been the original blacksmith’s. Years later this house would know another commercial enterprise, “Martha’s Herbery”.

The house at 268 Main Street dates to 1815, the residence of prominent citizen Charles C. Button, proprietor of the inn and a harness business. One hundred years later it would be purchased with funds raised by the Ladies Aid Society for use as a parsonage for the Congregational Church. The house north of the post office, referred to as “The Silas Tiffany Store”, is the only structure Burgoyne coined “the one that got away” for the difficulty of dating the current residence, which architecturally presents as 1820-1830 on a site which contains, on Clark’s 1858 map, three small structures identified as the Silas Tiffany house, his store, and the Town Hall.

Whether or not the original house identified as Thomas Steadman’s in an 1809 survey, on the southern corner of Old Route 6 East and Main Street, is at all included in the current residence is unclear. In 1833, Governor Cleveland built the house Burgoyne describes as “a temple…the myriad of architectural motifs, piled detail upon detail…the windows with elaborately molded trim and corner blocks…the front entry with its six panel grain painted door sunken deeply into the pedimented and pillared portico… elliptical panes with protruding rosettes at the joinery and elaborate carved wood encasing the panes.” The house has historical as well as architectural significance. Hampton was the State capital twice while Cleveland was Governor when, from his “Executive Office in Hampton” he issued a message to the legislature on May 4, 1843, and a Thanksgiving Proclamation on October 16, 1843.

Cleveland’s subdivisions of the east side of the road led to the last period of development. The first of these, the house at 236 Main Street, two structures architecturally distinct, the older portion on a stone foundation, the newer section on brick, became Dr. Marsh’s house and office. The house north of it was probably built, or moved to the site, shortly after the land transfers of 1830, and the house on the corner of Main Street and East Old Route 6, south of the store, was probably built shortly after the 1835 purchase of the lot. The house north of the Guild House, also an apartment house now, was built between 1836 and 1846, the features which distinguish it, the floor-to-ceiling fenestration and wraparound porch are Victorian modifications. The only other house on Main Street during this period was the one at 223, a dwelling listed in an 1838 deed, known as “the Stones” throughout the 20th century, and during the Depression” The Connecticut Yankee Tourist Home”. In Alison Davis’ Hampton Remembers, Harold Stone recalled, The first guests just dropped in, you might say. They stopped and asked to spend the night and so we put them up. And then the very next night a couple stopped and we told ‘em the sheets were all used but they said “couldn’t you just turn ‘em over and please let us stay?” So finally we did – and that was the beginning. At that time we didn’t have any bathroom, just the outhouse, and no running hot and cold water. So pretty soon we had the bathroom and running hot and cold water in the kitchen and then we needed a washer for all the sheets. And then the guests wanted to eat here so we had to get refrigeration. We got a lot of conveniences sooner than we would have if we hadn’t had to get ‘em for the guests.

This is one of many examples of Hampton’s hospitality, which served from the late 1800’s to the mid 1900’s as a summer colony for visitors. The Italianate house built in 1865 on the north corner of Main Street and Cedar Swamp Road would be donated to the town for a public library, serving in that capacity since 1924. The house at 245 Main Street, built in 1869 and later to become a cooking school, was originally a summer guest house for “ladies only” and a boarding house for women who worked at the inn. The mansion on the corner of Hammond Hill and Main Street, built in 1897 as a hotel called “Prospect House”, was originally an annex to the existing Chelsea Inn. In Hampton Remembers Bertha Burnham recalled, At that time there was the inn with all the long porches along the front, upstairs and down, and the barn in back and the little building next to the inn called “The Nutshell” and then of course the large Prospect House which was the annex.

It’s difficult to imagine the village as we walk through its development, envisioning the homes in their original forms. Imagine also that there were two roads in the town’s center, the existing street and another to the east, with a town green in between, lined with elms. The blight killed the elms, and though the highway eventually eliminated the lower road, it became a foot path, still visible in some of the paving. Many of us remember when the path, whether stones or worn dirt, stretched across every lawn from the Silas Tiffany Store to the Prospect House. Evenings people would walk along the foot path and visit for a spell on their neighbors’ porches, with a view of a picture-perfect post card of a New England village respecting its past.

Dayna McDermott