It’s time to talk about one of my favorite subjects again, and that would be this big old Red House. It looks old because it is: at one time it was the only residence out here on Rocky Nook – and that was in 1857. It’s a center chimney four-square, two stories- actually, 2.5. It’s hard to say if the original structure was that size. One of my favorite things to do is to research the history of the property, and part of what I hope to determine eventually is the age of the current structure, which may very well have been built over the cellar hole of a preceding structure.
The first people to live on the Nook settled here in the mid 1620s. Not on this site- up the road a piece, and you’d never know that there use to be a house and barn there. The site has undergone some archaeological examination, but mostly it’s just a lovely green hill with very old trees and a rock with a plaque on it. The inhabitants were John Howland and his family. John came over on the Mayflower (yep, that one), married fellow passenger Elizabeth Tilley, lived in Plymouth town for a while, but eventually purchased 20 acres of land with a dwelling house and barn from fellow pilgrim Mr. Jenney, and started to build a life here.
Rocky Nook in those days was a peninsula of pastures- and probably forest, but that forest would have been demolished in order to build and heat homes. The Nook juts out into a well-protected bay and, as you would expect by its name, its coast is lined by rocks. A time traveler arriving on a cold winter night would think it a bit of a boondocks- isolated, wind-swept, perhaps the sound of a few cattle lowing, because many, many more cows lived here than people. It must have been little better than camping on a cold night, but I’d bet things were very sustainable. Elizabeth had ten children. Ten.
The Howlands farm was lost to a fire, as was, I think, the homestead of John Howlands’ son, which was later built just West of his parents’ place.
More soon.
