Restoring the roof of the Old Conant Tavern (ca 1738)
Olde Mohawk has been contracted to re-roof one of the region's oldest extant taverns. The Conant House, located in Townsend, Mass., and one of Historic New England’s eighty-one stewardship properties, is featured in a new publication, Homecoming by Jill Peterson. Known locally as the “Old Mansion” and the “Conant Tavern,” the Conant House was constructed c. 1738 by John Conant, who moved from Concord, Massachusetts, to Townsend in 1738. Lott Conant, John’s father, purchased a saw mill and gristmill and approximately four acres of land in Townsend along the Squannacook River from John Stevens and John Pratt in 1735, which he then sold to John in 1738. Subsequently John constructed a two-and-one-half story, wood-framed house with a central chimney flanked by a single room on each side at the first and second stories. A one-story, lean-to addition was added to the rear soon after its construction.
The Conant House functioned as a tavern and was frequently cited in town records as the meeting place of various town committees. After John Conant’s death in 1756 his wife, Sarah, continued to keep the tavern, which was later kept by Nathan Conant, John and Sarah’s second son, and then by John Conant, John and Sarah’s youngest son. A four-room, two-story ell was constructed c. 1770, which is unique for its paneled, swinging partition designed to swing upon hinges and hook to the ceiling to create one single large room. Local tradition asserts that the house was a Tory safe haven or “harbor” during the Revolutionary War. In addition to the swinging partition, other unique interior features include early-nineteenth-century stenciling attributed to Rufus Porter in the second story southwest chamber of the Main House, early decorative painting surrounding a firebox at the second story southeast chamber of the Main House, and early door hardware throughout the house.
The Conant House remained in the Conant Family until 1825 when it was sold to James Wilson. The house was sold five years later in 1830 to Beriah Blood and Reuben Farrar. Ownership of the property changed hands several times through the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, until it was purchased in 1921 by Mr. and Mrs. Charles Messer Stow, members of the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities (SPNEA), now known as Historic New England. In 1922 William Sumner Appleton crafted an arrangement with the Stows that specified that the property would revert to Historic New England following their deaths. In return, Historic New England paid the Stows a sum of $1,000 toward immediate repairs to the house. Mrs. Stow relinquished her life interest in the property in 1952, and custodians were found to occupy the house and open it to the public.
Historic New England deaccessioned and sold the Conant House in 1976 with preservation restrictions that protect all exterior elevations of the house, and interior framing members, woodwork, stenciling, and decorative painting. The property has since changed ownership three times, and improvements to the property include construction of a well house in 1984; recreation of an eighteenth-century buttery in the west lean-to in 1984 using historic material from an eighteenth-century house in western Massachusetts; the relocation of a one-and-one-half story, eighteenth-century barn moved to the property from Deerfield, New Hampshire, in 1985; restoration of a missing section of stenciling at the second story southwest chamber of the Main House in 2001; and the recreation of a cage bar at the southeast parlor of the Main House in 2003. The Conant House remains a private residence today.
