The General's Residence
I had always
intended to stop by a house down on the CT shoreline, just to grab a photo of
an actual example of a stone wall using an English style of stone stacking that
may go back to the early 1700’s. I still haven’t done that but looking at some on-line images, I found that the place has a
name and a story I'd been unaware of...
Gen. William W. Harts House (1729)
May 20th, 2017 Posted in Colonial, Houses, Madison `
"The
house at 908 Boston Post Road in Madison, currently in a dilapidated condition,
was recently subject to a foreclosure. The first person to build on the
property was Ensign Nathaniel Dudley, c. 1729-1730, and the building was then
expanded over time with several additions. Capt. Edward Griffin (1762-1802),
who sailed schooners between between Boston and Haiti, acquired the house in
1799 from Lyman Munger. On one voyage, Capt. Griffin once threw his son Harry
overboard after a quarrel. The cook threw over a chicken coop to keep Harry
afloat and the young man was later rescued by a passing ship. Capt. Griffin was
a slave owner who committed a heinous act. Hearing that revenue officers were
coming to his house to assess his property, he entombed two of his slaves by
walling them in the basement and leaving them to die.
The house had a number of owners after Capt. Griffin.
Unoccupied from 1895 until 1909, it then became the summer home of Martha Hale
and her husband, William Wright Harts (1866-1961). An 1889 graduate of West
Point, Harts served in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, eventually rising to
the rank of Brigadier General. He oversaw a number of large construction
projects, involving fortifications and river and harbor engineering. In 1901,
he was sent to the Philippines, where he built roads and designed and
constructed Fort McKinley (now Fort Bonifacio).
During World War I, Harts served in France and was appointed
military governor of the Paris District and then Chief of Staff of the Army of
Occupation in Germany. He was also a military aide to President Woodrow Wilson.
Back in the United States, he supervised construction of the Lincoln Memorial
and the Arlington Memorial Amphitheater. He lived in Madison full time after
1930. The general’s uniform is now in the collection of the Madison Historical
Society. In the years since his death in 1961, the house, which came to be
called the “General’s Residence,” has been a wedding dress shop, a restaurant,
and a bakery." http://historicbuildingsct.com/?p=27210
"The General's Residence on 2/25/2017, the scheduled day of
the Foreclosure Auction. It was suddenly delayed until early May. See www.shorelinetimes.com/opinion/days-of-yore-general-s-res...
For more images of this home see flic.kr/s/aHskRMYGsL.
(Photo credit - Bob Gundersen www.flickr.com/photos/bobphoto51/albums)"
Headed North in Street View, some interesting curves:
So, there you go, a Post Contact Stone Wall.
Compare to the possible Indigenous constructions,
Ceremonial Stone Landscape Features, of past posts from Madison.
One great example of a "species specific" effigy can be found not too much farther north along that Old Indian Shoreline Path, a Diamondback Terrapin, a small spot to burn tobacco below it before making use of the salt marsh resource zone where these turtles can sometimes still be found:
And then there's Hammonasset
(Stone Fish Weir)
and
(Split and Filled Boulder)
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