Finds

It took two years to strip the interior of the building back to its original elements, removing nearly 40 tons in layers of drywall, plywood and plaster. This care allowed us to recover pieces of original millwork and construction lumber re-used when modifications were made, along with ritual objects and other fragments of the building's past.

Where possible we recovered sequences of wallpaper, paying special attention to newspaper used to underlay some layers which provided dates for the wallpaper. Dated wallpaper layers also helped identify when interior partitions were added and removed (mainly in the upstairs and downstairs store).

We were extremely fortunate for the efforts of Eric Rebiere, an avid metal detectorist. In 2012 he volunteered to scan areas of ground we would be excavating in restoration of the building. Aside from the many metal finds, he has also painstakingly re-assembled many ceramic objects from pottery fragments.

We recovered tokens and buttons from around the foundation wall. Under the basement floor we found keg spigots and whiskey bottles from tavern days, and many pottery fragments spanning from the mid-18th century through to turn-of-the-century hotel ware.

Particularly on the plank walls of the store, there was extensive graffiti dating from about 1830 through to 1854. After this time the plank walls were wallpapered.

Finally, sections of timbers too rotten to keep in the building were sent to the Cornell Tree Ring Laboratory in Ithaca, NY. The results of dendrochronology show all the timbers of the building were felled in the winter of 1816/1817.