OCR Text |
Show OLD WEBSTER HOME Farmhouse Where Statesman Was Born Is Restored. New Hampshire Building Rehabilitee! and Made to Look as it Did in Eighteenth Century To Celebrate Cele-brate Change August 28. - Philadelphia. The ancient New Hampshire farmhouse in which Daniel Dan-iel Webster was born has been reset on its old foundations and restored to look as it did in the eighteenth cen-- cen-- tury when Webster was a small boy, and preparations have been made to celebrate its rehabilitation. It is located lo-cated in the town of Franklin and the celebration will take place August 2S, 6ays a Franklin (N. H.) dispatch to the Philadelphia Record. It is expected that President Wilson will attend and deliver an address. Birthplace of Daniel Webster. Samuel W. McCall, former congressman congress-man from Massachusetts, who was the principal speaker at the one hundredth anniversary of Webster's graduation from Dartmouth college, will speak. Governor Felker of New Hampshire and governors of other states will attend. at-tend. There will be an address by a representative of Dartmouth. When a group of New Hampshire citizens formed the Daniel Webster Birthplace association the legislature appropriated $1,500 for the work. Other Oth-er funds were derived from member- ship fees and donations. The association associa-tion purchased the old Webster farm ?- of 130 acres for about $1,800. Only a part of the old house was there and It had to be moved from the original foundations. Nobody seemed to remember re-member just where it had stood, but careful search discovered the .stones on which it had rested before. The cellar had been filled in, but on being excavated the plan of the original house stood revealed. There were also some sketches that Webster himself had which showed how the old home had looked. Wherever possible the original material mate-rial was used. Some clapboards from the old barn, nearly is venerable as the house itself. Were utilized. In a few cases where new material had to be used wood stains gave it the appearance ap-pearance of age. The restoration of the old fireplace was simplified by the discovery of a pile of chimney bricks in a corner of the cellar the identical bricks that had formed the old chimney. chim-ney. They were all numbered, as was the custom in those days. The fireplace is in the combination kitchen and dining room and living room and is one of the two principal rooms of the house. Among the chimney chim-ney brick were found many other old domestic articles buried, among them the staves and the bottom of the bucket buck-et which originally hung in the well. This well, too, has been restored, with its old fashioned sweep. The birthplace association expects to have a caretaker who will live on the place and have the double duty of working the farm and guarding the ; old cabin against curio hunters. The site is three miles from the center cen-ter of Franklin, has no immediate neighbors, and is practically isolated, tt is said that when Daniel Webster was born, in 1782, this clearing and house stood farther north than any-other any-other in New Hampshire. The association will try to raise an endowment of $20,000 to provide for fc the perpetual car of the old farm. ' . |