Since 2001 Celina Moore and I have lived in a large white, two hundred year old, so-called Federal Center Hall style house. The story of the house began in the politically turbulent final decades of the 18th Century when many of Vermont's earliest settlers trekked north from Massachusetts to settle in the fertile valleys and dense forests of central Vermont. In the late 1780s, Samuel Rich, a carpenter with his tools on his back, walked to the tiny settlement of North Montpelier to seek his fortune.
Within a decade Samuel Rich had married the daughter of a prominent North Montpelier family, established two saw mills, a grist mill, a brickyard and a still, plus a house and barn for his growing family. By the turn of the century he had also acquired over 150 acres of prime farmland. Thus, Rich's elaborate Federal Center Hall house, completed in 1805 on a hill overlooking the village, reflected the standards and tastes of a demanding and successful entrepreneur.
Celina and her late pediatrician husband, Tom Moore, bought what had become known as Rich's Hollow Tavern in 1973. The main section of the house forms a hip-roofed, two story rectangle with four spacious rooms on each floor. Each of these rooms boasts a fireplace, the original kitchen fireplace and hearth, its ancient pot holding cast iron crane still in place, with brick lined baking ovens on each side. A diary of the Rich family preserved through the generations speaks of various farm chores and includes with nearly every day's log of activities, “chopped wood.”
This past winter, when heating oil prices soared, we developed a profound level of respect for the 19th Century families who maintained eight working fireplaces. Throughout the winter months someone trekked tirelessly from the wood pile to maintain those hungry fires, four of them on the second floor. Today's reality dictates a second floor with no heat. Family and grandchildren returning for Thanksgiving and Christmas each evening vanish beneath piles of blankets and quilts.
Built in a era when settler families often lived in hillside dugouts, Rich's mansion reflects the elaborate yet enduring taste of a Palladian window over the front door entrance porch, tapered wooden columns, ten foot ceilings, and, at a time when glass was a luxury, multi-paned 12 over 12 windows in every room. The contoured wooden framing of doorways, the intricate trim work of the entrance hall stairway speak to days of detailed hand work by skilled carpenters.
Twenty-four inch wide white pine floor boards sixteen feet long, second floor plank walls nearly thirty inches wide, and the exterior framing of this plank style house? Inch and half thick vertical spruce planks about two feet wide extending from foundation base plate to attic floor. Today's cozy winter fires, the singing and lively mealtime chatter, plus a fertile garden will sometime pass to generation number nine. They'll settle comfortably within these stout walls encircled by Samuel Rich's enduring legacy.
Erik Esselstyn
Celina, Mum, had the good sense to marry a man who knows how to write well!
And could there have been a more appropriately named man then Samuel RICH?
Thank you for providing us all with such a vivid description of the old Tavern house. We can almost smell the wood-burning in the fireplaces as we approach the house, hear the floorboards creaking as we move about inside, and shiver under our comforters as we listen to the chill North Winter wind whistle through the leaky portals. Fortunately, there is no lift in the house, so I will have to park my six wheel, rolling, electric Barcalounger by the kitchen fireplace embers overnight.
The two of you have done an admirable job, filling the breach caused by the wanderings of Celina, C3. As long as we are not going to be required to chop wood, I know we all eagerly await an invitation to come visit!
Xo, SC