A historic house speaks: Experts unearth discoveries that tell the story behind the Williams-Boltwood House in Goshen

GOSHEN — Clues being unearthed with archaeological techniques and painstaking observation are slowly recreating the story of the sprawling Williams-Boltwood House, a one-time tavern, inn and post office that predates the town itself.

“Structures like these don’t exist anymore in New England,” Bob Labrie said, surveying the old post office and general store on a recent morning. “It’s one of the things that’s special about this place.”

Labrie is treasurer for the Williams-Boltwood House Trust, which this year secured $108,450 in Community Preservation Act money to begin the first phase of rehabilitating the dilapidated structure.

The money is paying for the services of architectural historian Myron Stachiw and Bill Flynt, a dendrochronologist who takes core samples from the beams to determine when the tree was cut down and hence establish which parts of the house are oldest.

Their report, expected to be complete by next fall, will form the basis for future renovation efforts and grant applications, Labrie said.

The house presents plenty of puzzles. It was built for John Williams and dates to 1779, but it was situated originally some distance away, on the north side of the Goshen Cemetery. When the town was incorporated in 1781, the first town meeting was held there.

At some point before 1834, it was moved to its present site on the old Boston-Albany post road and other parts were added on. Besides the post office and general store, there’s a substantial barn and a ramshackle connector barn with an icehouse and a pit for firewood where all the broken dishes and glassware were dumped.

Its association with the Boltwoods came when Lucius Manlius Boltwood of Amherst, whose father, Lucius M. Boltwood, was closely involved with the founding of Amherst College in 1828, suffered a bad ankle injury at the stagecoach stop and had to stop a few days at the house to recuperate, according to Labrie.

Boltwood was nursed by John Williams’ granddaughter Clarinda Williams, and the two were married in 1860. They lived in Amherst and used the Goshen house as a summer home.

A descendant of John Williams always lived in the house until 1999, when Susan Babcock died. She had lived with her adopted son, Michael Cox, who was charged with elder abuse and left the area, according to Labrie.

The house had already fallen into disrepair. Labrie, a former firefighter, said one of his first calls in the 1990s was to the Williams-Boltwood House, and it was hard to maneuver a stretcher through all the piles of antiques and papers.

Signs of the times

The trust was formed in 2009 with a mission to renovate the house and use it as a facility to teach scholars about the family and the people who lived there.

Pieces of that history emerge from all kinds of different sources. Account books from the general store show John Williams was a blacksmith who obtained a license to become a retailer in the late 1780s, Stachiw said. He soon recorded sales of more than $1,000 of liquor and acquired an innkeeper’s license.

In his 1834 will, John Williams left different rooms in the house to different daughters. The will also shows the house had achieved its final form by that point.

“Documents enrich the (story of the house) greatly,” Labrie said.

Account books also show Williams sold stagecoach tickets. Rough-hewn carriage steps remain in place in front of the house.

Building technology is another sign of changing times. Early augers had no center point, which can be seen in the drill marks left on beams and joists.

The home itself was full of items from an earlier age — general store goods still on the shelf, Harper’s magazines from the 1870s, a tintype photograph.

Stenciling along the edges of many of the home’s walls, revealed by Stachiw’s careful removal of layers of paint and wallpaper, points to an origin in the late 18th to early 19th century.

Many of the antiques were moved off-site for safekeeping after the trust acquired the house two years ago. Some of those items, such as a carriage that has seen better days, are now back in the barn.

Another story that emerged from the barn was a military uniform, in a bag with mothballs, at the bottom of a huge pile of clothes and trash, Labrie said.

It turned out to be a women’s uniform. Nancy Clifford, a family member living in San Diego who is on the trust’s board, knew whose it was — a relative who had served with U.S. forces in France during World War II as a code breaker, confirmed by a patch on the uniform.

From the past to the future

Local interest in the property is quite keen. People, some whom knew it as “the ghost house,” would stop by when work began, Labrie said. But the question remains: “What do we do with it?”

The trust is starting outreach and developing an online presence. The house and barn cannot be moved under restrictive covenants imposed by the town prior to the sale, he said, but the connector barn could be torn down or reconfigured as a community space.

“We want to get people involved,” he said. “We want them to have skin in the game.”

James Pentland can be reached at jpentland@gazettenet.com.