In
December 2001, John and Anne
L’Hommedieu
moved into Williamson’s octagon house with their
children -- Christopher, age 14, and Laura, age 12. Ten years later,
on June 11, 2011, the house was included in the
Williamson-Pultneyville Historical Society’s house tour, titled
“Doors to the Past: Cobblestone & Brick Tour of Homes.” Prior
to the tour, I did a lot of research on our house in order to create
an informational display, and we spruced things up the best we could
in four months. The floors on the main floor were stripped,
varnished, and sealed; because of the toxic odor, we had to stay away
for several days. The front porch was painted, and, of course,
everything was cleaned as much as possible. With the help of friends
and family, we welcomed many visitors and answered a multitude of
questions about the house. It was fun and tiring, but the house was
looking its best.
The
walls of our house are 20 inches thick. The exterior is covered by
stucco, but underneath it is cobblestone. We don’t know why or
exactly when the stucco was added. From what we can see at the base
of some walls where the stucco has worn off, the cobblestones appear
to be “field cobbles,” although one source described them as
“classic lake washed cobblestones.” The ones that we can see are
of various sizes and shapes, which is different than other
cobblestone structures where the stones are uniform in size and
arranged in neat patterns.
Our
house is one of the eleven historic buildings on the Williamson
coverlet, and it is called the S.P.W. Douglass Farmstead. I have
discovered it would be more accurate to call it the Stephen Paddock
Farmstead.
In
the 1850 census, as well as in the 1860 census, Stephen Paddock
William Douglass was living with his wife, Ursula Douglass (née
Shaff), his four children (William, Walter, Joseph, and Emily), and
his uncle, Stephen Paddock. It actually took quite a bit of digging,
using the MyHeritage website and communicating on there with two
descendants of Stephen Douglass (one whose name is Stephen Douglass!)
to discover the relationship between the two Stephens. I eventually
figured out that Stephen Douglass’ mother, Chloe Douglass (née
Paddock), had named Stephen after both his uncle and his father,
William Douglass.
The
uncle, Stephen Paddock, was the farmer and the original owner of the
property, which originally included 140 acres of fruit trees, as far
as I can tell. Stephen Douglass was a teacher, and I assume he taught
at the District #10 one-room schoolhouse because it was within
walking distance of the house. It was located at the northwest corner
of the intersection of Salmon Creek Road and Ridge Road and was known
as the Ridge Chapel School. It was originally a cobblestone building
that was torn down at an unknown time and rebuilt as a wooden
structure. The structure is still there today on the Mason farm
property, but it is in poor condition and has likely been used for
storage for a long time.
Our
octagon house may have been built as early as 1850, but it has been
difficult to pin down the date of its origin. The heyday of octagon
house-building in the United States was from the late 1840s through
the 1860s, with the majority being built in the 1850s. Approximately
1,000 octagon buildings were built in the United States during this
period, and most of them were in New York State. The octagon style of
architecture became popular thanks to the writings of Phrenologist
Orson Squire Fowler (October 11, 1809 - August 18, 1887). His book,
The
Octagon House: A Home for All, or A New, Cheap, Convenient, and
Superior Mode of Building (also
titled
A
Home for All, or The Gravel Wall and Octagon Mode of Building),
was written in 1848 and revised in 1853. A 1973 reprint of the 1853
edition is still available under the title The
Octagon House: A Home for All.
Orson
Fowler was most well known as a phrenologist, and he and his brother,
Lorenzo Niles Fowler, had a phrenological office in New York City.
Their sister, Charlotte, also eventually joined in on the phrenology
movement, known as a pseudoscience. Much more about the Fowlers,
phrenology, and octagon houses can easily be found in several online
sources.
The
octagon buildings that were built in the United States in the 1850s
and 1860s included houses, barns, schools, and toll houses. If you
search the Internet for octagon houses, you will find that some were
very fancy and ornate, while some were quite plain. Mr. Fowler
believed that the octagon shape was healthier and more efficient than
other styles, with good ventilation, more windows, and more wide open
spaces. He also wanted to make houses more affordable for the common
man by using materials that were already available on the owner’s
property, such as stones and hardwood trees. Mr. Fowler himself had a
“monumental” four-story, sixty-room octagon house in Fishkill,
New York, with many “modern” conveniences, such as, “central
heating, running water, indoor flush toilets, a roof cistern to
collect rain water, natural gas lighting, and a water filtration
system.” (Amusing Planet) The house, unfortunately, is no longer
standing. It was called “Fowler’s Folly” and was dynamited in
1897 after being condemned as a public health hazard.
In
the case of the Williamson octagon house, there was an abundance of
stones on the property when it was built (and there are still plenty
of them!). If we recall that, in ancient times, Ridge Road was once
the shoreline of Lake Ontario (Glacial Lake Iroquois), it makes sense
that there were so many stones that could be described as lake washed
cobbles. It is also good to recall that the Erie Canal was completed
in 1825, and many of the masons settled near it when their work on
the Canal was completed. That explains why there were, and still are,
many cobblestone buildings (approx. 900) in New York State, primarily
near the Erie Canal. Wayne County alone has more than 150 cobblestone
structures. So, our octagon house is historically significant not
only because of its shape, but also because of the materials with
which it was built.
I
have copies of nine deeds, from when Stephen Paddock sold the
property to Ursula Douglass in 1866 to our purchase in 2001. The
owners, in order, were: Stephen Paddock (? – 1866), Ursula Douglass
(1866-1884), William Z. Fish (1884-1904), Herbert L. Johnson
(1904-1928), Sarah Sperry (1928-1947), Lynn L. Falkey (1947-1969),
Lynn L. and Doris Falkey (1969-1974), Samuel and Marilyn Mercurio
(1974-2001), and John and Anne L’Hommedieu (2001-the present). To
throw a monkey wrench into all the facts, an old undated map of
Williamson (that shows individual houses and the names of their
owners), has S.P.W Douglass and S. Paddock living in separate houses.
Does
our house prove Fowler’s suppositions about octagon houses? It
definitely has a lot of living space -- 2,784 square feet and many
windows – a total of 33 plus 10 in the cellar. The main floor is
wide open for air flow, with two doors that open onto the stairway to
the second floor. All rooms except one on the second floor open into
each other, and there is a walkway at the bottom of the spiral cupola
stairs that opens to both sides of the house. There is plenty of room
for air to flow unabated from the first floor to the cupola, and
there are plenty of windows to let in lots of light. However, it is
difficult to keep the house cool in the summer; we have at least one
fan in every room. It has also been expensive to heat the house in
the winter, although the new boiler and zoned heating have helped.
This
year, 2022, is our twenty-first year of living in Williamson’s
octagon house. I have called this house “the money pit” almost
since the moment we moved in because so much needed fixing. If it had
ever been repaired, it was probably with duct tape, or so I tell
people. When we bought the property, there was a 3-car garage that
was irreparable, so we had it torn down and buried. There was also a
migrant shack on the south side of the creek that was in shambles, as
well as a building in the east corner on the north side of the creek
with a cement floor. Both of those buildings have also been torn
down.
In
2002, we rented a very large dumpster and dragged all sorts of farm
equipment into it – both large and small pieces – and completely
filled that dumpster with a large variety of debris. Since then, we
have had to drag things like an old spray rig out to the edge of the
road so that the metal collectors would find them. To this day, as we
continue to work on clearing and caring for the acreage on the south
side of the creek, we still find large pieces of metal, as well as
undecomposed items from a few locations where previous owners must
have dumped their trash. During the summer of 2021, in fact, a
metal-collector took a very large, rusty oil drum that John and I had
rolled to the side of the road (it took forever – it was that
large!). The metal collector agreed to take part of an old plow, an
old engine, and an old truck bed, as well. That summer, we also
collected, delivered, and paid for the recycling of 35 old tires of
all sizes. Some tires had been there a very long time and had plants
growing out of them. Just today, in fact, I found a bullet casing, a
golf ball, two pieces of glass, and a large piece of fabric while
trying to pull out some of the seemingly thousands of prickly vines
and poison ivy vines that are everywhere in our section of the former
apple orchard. It is a job that never ends, but we are trying to
avoid clearing some of the land to the south because there are deer
who live there.
We
soon replaced the roof and thirty-eight windows (still seven more
cellar windows to go). Eventually, we replaced all the appliances,
bathroom fixtures, the water heater, and the boiler. We added a
swimming pool where the garage used to be and installed a set of
stairs on the west side of the front porch. We created a lot of
gardens, both for flowers and for vegetables, and we took down old
trees that were in bad shape and planted several new ones. Most
recently, we had vinyl siding added to the cupola, had all the
soffits encased in vinyl, rebuilt and enlarged the side porch/deck,
repaired the back room (someone called it a sun room, but it was not
original to the house) and had the kitchen totally remodeled. The
house really doesn’t have any storage space, so we use the back
room and the space at the bottom of the cupola stairs. There is no
attic except a crawl space.
During
the ice storm of 2003, we had no power and wanted to use the
fireplace in the living room for heat, but the cap on the chimney was
frozen shut. So, the four of us went up to the cupola, tied a sturdy
rope around 15-year-old Chris’ waist, opened the window on the west
side, gave Chris a long stick, and lowered him far enough to reach
the chimney with the stick to break up the ice. Years later, we still
can’t believe we did that.
Is
this big, old house haunted? Well, you never know. Laura described
this 2011 incident: “It
was the year that we fixed up and showed the house during the summer
tour. My iPod Touch was on the speaker dock when all of a sudden it
stopped playing. This was odd because someone would've had to press
pause on the touch screen. I pressed play again, and moments later it
happened again. The music stopped. This happened once more before I
said out loud, ‘Ok, if you're there, press play.’ However, the
room remained silent. This was most likely a fluke, but maybe it was
a ghost.”
Chris
also mentioned sometimes hearing footsteps that were inexplicable.
Sometimes, I have heard music at night while lying in bed. It is
faint, so I don’t know the tunes, but it has happened several
times. Other times, I have been sitting in the living room and have
heard footsteps overhead, even though I’m the only person in the
house. This happened once while I was on a Zoom meeting with Amber
Linson and Sandi Hamilton. Very weird. There was another time when a
lady was here for us to sign some documents. It turned out that she
was a psychic or medium. She spoke of my parents being in the room. I
believed it for a few days, but later decided it was nonsense. It is
certainly possible that this house is haunted because at least
Stephen Paddock, the original builder/owner, died here one month
after selling it to Ursula Douglass.
The
Douglass family moved to Douglass, Kansas, in 1884. I have
communicated with the Douglass Historical Society, and it was Joseph
Douglass, a relative of the Douglass family, who first settled the
town, having moved there after the Civil War.
I
recently communicated with Jean Falkey Heffernan, who grew up in the
house and was a 1966 graduate of Williamson Central School. Some of
her thoughts were illuminating. She said it was originally 140 acres
and included 13-14 structures, including three 2-story houses, a
one-room house, a 3-car garage, 2 barns, and several smaller
outbuildings. Jean described the outside of the house as “cobblestone
[that] was flat and stuck on some type of slats randomly, then
chicken type wire was placed over that and the stucco over that.”
Her family thought the house had originally been built that way. Jean
said her father held the mortgage for the next owner who started
selling off pieces of the land before he even owned it. It’s my
guess that this property originally extended all the way west to Eddy
Ridge Road, on both the north and south sides of the creek that runs
through the property – Salmon Creek. There remain only 5.5 acres of
former farmland attached to the house.
I
still don’t have solid answers to my two major questions regarding
the date the house was built and when the stucco was added, although
I’m leaning toward it being built in 1850 and stucco applied as
part of the original construction. Many thanks to the people who
have helped me so far – Chester Peters (former Williamson
Historian), Perry Howland (current Williamson Historian), Peter Evans
(Wayne County Historian), Nanette Peters Hance (W-PHS President), Dan
Montondo (W-PHS artifacts cataloger), Gail McCarthy (co-chair of the
2011 W-PHS house tour), Ken and Katie Artl (Ken being somewhat of an
authority on cobblestone houses), Robert Kline (of the
www.octagon.bobanna website), Katherine Blair (of the Douglass
Historical Museum in Kansas), and Jean Falkey Heffernan.
Citations:
Amusing
Planet.
https://www.amusingplanet.com/2021/03/the-octagon-houses-of-orson-fowler.html.
April 26, 2022.
Blair,
Katherine. “Re: Douglass Settlers.” Received by Anne L’Hommedieu,
20 April, 2022.
Fowler,
Orson Squire. The
Octagon House: A Home for All. New
York : Dover Publications, 1973 (an unabridged republication of the
original 1848 version).
“Octagon
House.” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octagon_house
“Orson
Squire Fowler.” Wikipedia. March 2022.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orson_Squire_Fowler
Over,
Danielle. “The Octagon House Was Not a Square.” Hoffman paper,
1982.
“Stephen
Paddock.” Find
a Grave.
March 2022.
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/136493760/stephen-paddock
“Stephen
Paddock William Douglass.” Find
a Grave. March
2022.
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/86352050/stephen-paddock_william-douglass
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