Multiple stories, multiple values : assessing the importance of a house study.

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Date
2013-05Author
Bazar, Nancy Sceery
Advisor
Linebaugh, Donald
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Show full item recordAbstract
In 2002, without historic preservation background, I restored an unassuming two-story
brick house, in the Fairfield, Pennsylvania, National Register Historic District. At the time I
bought the house, it was reported to be the town’s Quaker meeting house.
The restoration resulted in the partial destruction of a large outbuilding, which I now
know as the earliest structure on the site and possibly a station on the Underground Railroad. I
will argue that information provided by a thorough house study prior to the restoration could
have significantly altered the preservation outcome.
Drawing on Anne Yentsch’s seminal study of the ways in which houses become
embedded with stories that might remember some occupants and events while entirely forgetting
others, this study creates a history of the property, examining all the different families that ever
lived in or owned the house. This approach attempts to recover all of the fascinating stories of
the various characters who occupied the property. Ultimately, documentation of these stories has
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expanded the significance of the house and, hopefully, will reintroduce a cast of forgotten people
to the town of Fairfield.
While the study revealed that the house was not a Quaker meeting house, it identified six
Civil War veterans associated with the house, including two brothers from Maryland, one who
fought for the Confederacy and the other for the Union. Furthermore, the site was the location of
a tragic civilian casualty in Fairfield, indirectly resulting from the Battle of Gettysburg. Most
significantly, the property was likely a stop on the Underground Railroad, and once owned by
staunch abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens; it is suggested that the house was built in the style of a
Quaker meeting house as a marker for the Underground Railroad stop.