After a nearly year long legal battle to prevent the historic 1858 Kent Wells Sherman House from moving to a lot that was purchased for that very purpose, we preservationists have come out on top and won the long legal fight, at long last clearing the way for the house to finally move to its new permanent location. The move will happen in two weeks and we are most relieved and excited to get it there and then start doing some serious fundraising to begin the work of restoring it to its former glory. I know that a lot of people have complained about us saving what had been a student rooming house for 42 years before it was vacated to be demolished. They could not understand why anyone would want to save a battered old house lived in by decades of student tenants, but what they fail to understand is that the whole purpose of historic preservation is to take old structures like this one that have fallen into some disrepair and restore them to what they might once have looked like, at least as much as is possible. Surprisingly, the house interior, while cut up into small rooms for student rental, retains far more historic detail than we could ever have hoped to find. The baseboards, some doors and escutcheon plates, window mill work and the newel post of the banister are all original. In the corners of the rooms, one can clearly see the evidence of its post and beam construction, and the basement and attic have original 10" x 10" hand hewn pegged beams.
One basement beam still very much has the bark on it, as you can see by the photo on the left. As I reached out my hand to touch it, it occurred to me that this particular tree probably started growing sometime in the 1700s, so it is like touching history to put my hand on it. I do hope that we can excavate a basement for the house once it is on its new site so that people can see the remarkable beams down there. I desperately want people to be able to connect to the history of this house and those who lived - and died - there. This is a house that was family home for 110 years before it fell into use as a student rental. That it is as intact as it is inside is remarkable and that nobody seemed to know this house's amazing history is also something that rather astonishes me. That is another thing that people complained about during the long legal battle: why didn't anybody know or care about this house until its demolition was imminent and why care about it now? This has motivated me to want to do some detective work and uncover more of our town's hidden history that might be something we see or walk by every day but don't know about, just like this house that stood in a residential neighborhood that people walked and drove by every day without realizing that they were looking at a historic home. Stories like the one that this house tells us can have a way of disappearing over time, particularly houses that cease being owner occupied and fall into student rental status and get sold every few years to new landlords who do not care about its history but rather see it as investment income via rental money. That is what happened to this historic 1858 house. Starting in 1968, the family that had owned it since around 1924 sold it to the first of what would become many landlords who didn't know or care about the house or its history. How many other historic homes like that have we lost or could lose unless we unearth their stories? This is what I want to write a book about, our hidden and forgotten history, particularly pre-Civil War history, the story of our town in early times before the railroad made it a bit of a boom town. I may have to wait many years to write this story, because I will have to wait until I can retire, which at the rate things are going, will never happen, but I am going to have to find some way to start researching and writing our town's early forgotten history before we lose any other forgotten historic landmarks to the wrecking ball.
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