I think it’s mad at me. Ever since I publicized its flaws in this space two weeks ago, my house has been giving me nothing but icy stares. It even went so far as to try water torture through a beam in the family room. With every ping in the bucket, I was sorrier and sorrier I had ever said anything bad about it.
The truth is, I love my house despite its flaws. Maybe even because of them. Every scratch, missing doorknob, and cracked wall gives it character—sort of like the lines on an aging face. (OK, maybe I’m rationalizing here.)
I like to think that every imperfection has a story behind it. Like the kitchen beam covered in a dark stain, except for 6 inches at one end that is noticeably lighter. Who stained it and why did “whoever” stop there and never get matching stain? (I really have no business asking, since I haven’t gotten matching stain in 40 years.) Maybe the brothers who began building the house in 1806 ran out of stain and each of them thought the other was going to finish up.
“I’ll pick up another batch of that coating from the coffin-maker uptown,” Asa Wetherbee said at the end of a day’s work.
“Nah,” said Josiah, “I’ll get some from that new store in Ayer.”
And then they both went up the street to the tavern, and the beam was forgotten.
Ten children
In 1809, when they completed the house, Josiah sold his half of the property to Asa. Good thing. Josiah went on to have 17 children—imagine the traces they would have left. Asa himself had nine children—all daughters—but only four of them in this house.
It is a moot point because the next owners, Emory Barnard and his first wife Susan, had 10 children. Between 1819 and 1837 their comings and goings on the back stairs could have made those deep gouges on the risers, down to the bare wood. I can forgive Susan and Sarah and Martha and David and the rest of them for all that tromping, because I think their father really loved this house.
When the children were grown, Emory sold the house; and after Susan died, he married Harriet, who passed away seven years later. Then he married a woman 30 years younger than he.
Twenty-six years after he had first owned the house; he bought it for a second time, and he and Mary Jane lived here for five years until Emory’s death. Maybe he was just desperately trying to capture the past, but I like to think that he had a special fondness for the house and wanted to bring his young bride to live here.
Four sisters
On the other hand, Ephraim Houghton had good reason to hate the house. In 1858 he and his wife, Caroline, and their 5-year-old daughter, Ella, and infant son, Walter, moved into the house. Three years later, within a span of three months, Ella, Walter, Caroline, and 1-year-old George were all dead of diphtheria. Understandably, he fled to Colorado, leaving the house to hold his sorrow.
Ebenezer Willard owned the house from 1873 to 1876. Most likely he purchased the home for his elderly wife and himself and their four adult daughters. In 1876 Susan died and Ebenezer deeded the house to his four girls, one of whom was a widow; the other three had never married. The third daughter, Julia Willard, was one of the many women who sewed the flag for the 1882 flagpole on the Common. Maybe that was her needle glinting in a gap between the floorboards, along with dust and pine needles.
For the next 30 years, various people seemed to have had ownership of the house, all with the understanding that they would be caretakers to the Willard sisters. They would have worn bare the floorboards by the fireplace, pulling chairs closer for their charges to stay warm. One by one the sisters died, starting with Mary in 1886 and ending with Susan in 1912. They all died at home, and their funerals were held from here. I find that strangely comforting.
43 years
The person who owned the house the longest—43 years from 1917 to 1960—was Ellen Mongovin. (Three more years and I beat her record.) She was born in Northern Ireland and came to this country around 1900. She and her husband took in foster children, and Ellen was a laundress. (I have no desire to beat her record for doing laundry.) I wonder where her washtubs were and if the pipes ever froze on her as they have for us.
I love that all these people lived here and left their marks. I feel a connection to them through “our” house. Whatever joys and sorrows my family and I have had here are echoes of the experiences of former occupants, and, through them all, the house at 7 Oak Hill has held us.
Thank you to genealogist Susan Lee for providing me with a deed history of my house and introducing me to its former residents.
