Historical Research

Using historical documents and interviews with neighbors and historians, we hope to compile a detailed history of the property and its people. Below is an excerpt from John W. Davis’s 1905 Personal Memoranda describing “The Moving” of their childhood house in 1832 from a back field to where it stands today.

In the fall of 1829 we moved from the “Old Field House” the home of my first recollections to the “Papoosesquaw place” a three roomed cottage in which I was born.  These two houses were on the same farm.  I have spoken of the first as the road-side home because it was situated at the junction of converging roads, about fifty rods south of “Burying-place Hill” at a point of some considerable travel.  The second place was an inroad place with rivers bounding it upon the east and south, and a dense thicket and morass upon the west and north respectively.  No road led up to this house and the place was approached only by bridle ways and a string-piece stretching across the river upon the south which people from homes northward crossed on Sundays on their way to church.

At this inroad lonely place we lived for three years or until Sept. 1832, when we and the house, too were moved to the “Boston Lot” across the rivers at the easterly end of the farm.  This moving marks an epoch in life’s memories.  Both father and mother tiring of the lonesomeness of the location of their inroad home, decided to move this house out to the road and to bring the “old-field house” to it, thus increasing their rooms, and improving their situation.

Preparatory to these movings Uncle Peckham had consented to let them have his kitchen to live in until the moving was done, the main portions of his house being occupied by his sons Silas and Mason with their families who had moved there from Providence to escape from the Cholera which was then epidemic there.

All things being ready with most of the furniture stored in crib and barn, the chimney was taken down and the house proper raised upon “skids”.  At an appointed day the neighbors from all around about came with log chains and oxen, forty yoke, early in the morning, and forming two strong teams of twenty yoke each under control and guidance of Capt. George B. Peck. Mr. Burden Monroe hitched teams to the skids and the “Moving” began.  I well remember the scene.  It looked like a training day up Papoosequaw.  Two hundred people, more or less, of every age from five to eighty and five gathered there.  I well remember two of them Mr. James Horton and Mr. Martin Pearce clad in their habitual attire of short breeches long hose and low shoes, doublet and broad-skirted dress-coats.  These men were the last we can recall who held to that manner of dress and they were known as gentlemen.

The start was propitious.  The team drew the house off its foundations readily and started to sweep down the meadow but at once then and there the want of skillful engineering became manifest.  Evidently the farmers had forgotten, if they ever knew the use of rolls to turn the course of moving building, nor did they think or know that a strong team becomes powerless when formed on a curved line. There was a decided sweep and a down grade.  As the teams were turned from south to east they drew at right angles to the skids which caused them to cut into greensward until they rolled and the house lurched off them a wreck.

Then the doors, windows and roof were removed, the house reloaded and started eastward upon its way to the first river.  Happily the water was low and the stream and mires were well filled with facines and brush which enabled the teams with their load to get over to the flat land which was readily crossed and the second and larger river was then filled with brush and crossed at the point since known as “the place where the house went across”.  Then came the tug of war for the course was upward along an undulating way and it was found that to haul a house up hill over the undulations was quite a different undertaking from taking it over a down grade and an even course, and that the long teams became inoperative on rolling ground.  So it was decided to lighten the load by taking the west end of the house off and off it came.  From this point forward it was a struggle of main strength and “cussing”.  The oxen were all fagged out and the log chains were broken faster than the blacksmith Willard Barney who followed the moving with his forge could mend them.  The men became querulous and discouraged, so that when the remnant of the house was got up to the high land a long distance from its destination the effort was called off as the sun was too low to warrant further work.

Meanwhile the bountiful supper which had been cooked and set out in the kitchen to regale the teamsters when they with their oxen and the house should arrive at the final destination at noon, as fully expected, - stood untasted much to the chagrin of the women who had prepared it.  If the men had not eaten they had drunk bountifully, which may have been one reason for the days disasters.  The dinner became a supper to those who endured to the end and the days work (but not the memory of it) ended.  The “Moving” has been a day to reckon from for many years in our family.

After a few days Mr. Silas Peckham a native mechanical genius prepared some rolls and resetting the wrecked frame rolled it by the aid of a few men to the chosen location.  The cellar was thrown out and walled, a new roof set up and shingled over, and the west end, which had been removed enroute was roughly boarded, the chimney was rebuilt and we moved in for the Winter, tho’ with fear for our health.  Strange to say, our family all remained well, while our neighbors lost children by fevers that winter.

The following spring the “Old field” house was sawed in two and each half taken upon wheels and brought to the new location upon the farm, where all were built into one and constituted our home while I remained there.  We children slept in the attic and the cold crept in through the unplastered walls and snow often sifted thru upon our heads.