The adjoining house now owned by the A. P. Gray estate[61] was then owned by a blacksmith of the name of Chatfield, whose wife, a sister of our old patriarch O. F. W. Crane, was in the last stages of consumption, and was put into my hands as a patient by her then attending physician, one of my old preceptors, Dr. Francis W. Hine,[62] of Franklin.
DR. GURDON HUNTINGTON’S HOME
The Oldest House in the Village.
After the A. P. Gray house came the Wilmot homestead.
The next was an old rookery where the residence of the widow Briggs now stands and in the same yard stood a small house which was afterward burned.
Then came a house patterned after the old house behind the Post Office. An incident attached to the latter dwelling I overlooked in its proper place and will give it here. I bought this property, on the corner of Martin Brook Street, in 1850, of Col. A. D. Williams, and lived in it seventeen years. Here my sons were born. While living there I took out the chimney and in doing so, came across a brick, on which were the initials of a man and the year 1809, thus giving at least a hint as to the age of that chimney.[63] The house mentioned above stood on the site of the fine residence afterwards erected by Evans Owens, which was burned mysteriously.
Next was the Dr. Nijah Cone house, now owned by his grandson Frederick L. Cone, and then the Gilbert Cone house, now owned by James White.
If we now cross the road and return, we find the house at the foot of the hill which was the Niel Robertson residence.
The next house stood where the John Van Cott residence now is[64] and was owned by Johnson Wright who conducted a tannery in the rear of the house. He had a leather store in a building which was moved and now stands on Martin Brook Street where it has been converted into a house for rental.