While Eastport had a twisting trail into the village, the first real road was Water Street, laid out in October 1803, “from Mr. Todd’s house to Mr. Shackford’s.”
The Todd house, most recently known as a bed and breakfast inn, is believed to be the oldest surviving dwelling in Eastport. It was built around 1781 — some say as early as 1775 as a cabin – by John C. Todd and has early additions. Unlike ours, it had a large central chimney with multiple fireplaces, a colonial New England architectural signature. Ours had two smaller chimneys, including a precariously collapsing brick arch in the cellar when we bid on the place. That had to go before the rest of the bricks caved in.
When I began this investigation, I didn’t feel our house goes back quite that far, though I’m now convinced that Captain John had some residence on our lot by the time Water Street came along. For now, let me simply say the plot has thickened. No pun intended.
As historian Jonathan D. Weston describes,
“Water Street was laid out, 24 feet wide, after opposition by those who contended that 18 feet was ample width as it would allow two wheel-barrows to get by each other with room to spare, and, at the suggestion that it would be too narrow for horses and carriages to pass, scouted the idea that the idea that strange curiosities would ever be seen on Moose Island.”
That does explain the traffic congestion downtown today, long after horses and carriages yielded to automobiles and delivery trucks.
Key Street, bordering Shackford’s northern property line, came along in 1805, and then Shackford Street. Third, meanwhile, appears to the third east-west street in the Shackford tract. It is the only numeral street in the city.
Do note that Water Street was interrupted by gates and bars until 1808, when the town ordered their removal.
Up to 1820, as Weston observed, the town had only four public ways and no suitable places of worship. The annual town meeting was conducted in a small meetinghouse on today’s Clark Street..
The 1855 and 1879 Eastport maps show the main section of the house situated as ours is on this property. In the 1855 map, above, there were two ells but only one, larger than the current mudroom, in the 1879 map. Thus, for a time, a small courtyard existed, a common feature of the period. We have no way of knowing their use, for now. Sheds for horses or firewood are possibilities, as are a kitchen and common room.
The cellar, though, has thick stone walls, a serious undertaking.
As our renovations work has confirmed, the house is timber framed — what you may think of as post and beam, except that pegs were used rather than metal brackets and bolts. The nails, by the way, were hand cut.
That rules out Weston’s mention of the second framed house in town being built shortly after 1812 by John Shackford but removed shortly before 1888, perhaps the one John junior had a block further south on Water Street. (It may have been moved across the street sometime after 1835, if we go by the maps.)
Other evidence of an early origin of the house are the hand-split oak lathing, found in the ceiling. and the hand-cut nails. Those lathes disappeared from common usage by 1830, or so we were told.
All of it, of course, has relevance on the house we bought.
Jnana's Red Barn 