Home-Lot # 13

John Blake (seen originally as Black) was the original proprietor of this home-lot. He deeded it to his son Samuel who settled there, and for generations was known as the Blake Homestead. He also sold some of the East Street frontage of lot 13, including one which was later owned by Jeremiah Prescott who sold it to James and Samuel Weeks, being known for a long period of time as ‘the old Weeks place. Samuel’s daughter Elizabeth married in 1797 John Chesley, and the homestead passed to them and remained in the family through his son John; his son Daniel Gilman Chesley; to his daughter Eleanora Chesley who married Lewis Nutter. She prepared a talk to the Epsom Historical Association in 1970, which gives a wonderful history of the homestead.

Epsom was incorporated May 18, 1727. Although my house is not one of the oldest in town, it was built by one of the earliest settlers. Samuel Blake is reported to have come to Epsom in 1733 as a boy of 15. His father, John Blake, was one of the 20 proprietors whose requirement was to build a house and plant or sow 3 acres on each home ot, so called. Apparently there was no requirement as to length of their stay. Until the close of the French and Indian Wars, about 1749-50, probably no great attempt was made a permanent settlement.

A meeting of the proprietors was held in 1743 but these meetings were not necessarily held in their township. The early settlers spent the warm months of the year on their Epsom acreage and returned to their former homes in Rye, Greenland or other towns for the winter.

In 1749 John Blake deeded to his son Samuel Lot #10 of the Home Lots. Samuel also owned Lot # 9 as a later deed for the property showed. {Actual lots 13 & 14} These two 50 acres lots were laid out in 1732. They were bounded on the north by that part of the Center road known as West Street, and extended in a southerly direction 160 rods up Sanborn Hill to land of Charles McCoy, an early settler. He sold his land in 1760 to Reuben and Eliphalet Sanborn and it has been in possession of the Sanborn family until recent years. This is how Sanborn Hill got its name. There was an early house on one of these lots on the Center Road at the corner of the old Sanborn Hill Road. This may have been the home of Samuel’s older brother John.

Samuel was married in 1743 and probably about that time built his house on the location where my present house stands.

He was a friend to the Indians and in fact paid them for the land he had already been granted. The price was ten shillings but for one of these shilling he gave them his knife which they had much admired. So the story had always been told that he bought his 100 acre farm from the Indians for 9 shillings and a jack-knife. He also invited the Indians into his house to partake of meat roasted in the fireplace, which pleased them very much. Once when he was searching for his wandering cow, one of his Indian friends warned him of the presence of Indians of an unfriendly tribe so that he was able to return home safely.

The first house was destroyed by fire. Evidence of the fire remained for many years as one of the young Lombardy poplars in front of the house was badly burned. These trees had been brought from England and lived to grow to great size, and were finally blown over by strong winds when about 150 years old. The fire burned one of them but it still grew with deep indentations in its trunk. In later years its girth going in and out of the indentations was 28 feet.

The foundation of the house is of granite, the great blocks having been hauled from the quarries in Hooksett and Allenstown by ox teams. The house was built facing the Center Road with the end and side entrance facing the old Sanborn Hill road. The road we now use was built many years later, about 1847, as the town had grown in the direction of the village on the new turnpike road. This was shorter and avoided the steeper hills.

Lumber for the house was no doubt cut on the farm and sawed in the mill of which Samuel Blake was part owner. Supporting timbers were hand hewn. The large central chimney rests on a great pile of rocks in the middle of the cellar. Rocks were no problem to obtain as every hillside farm had them in abundance as is evidenced by the miles of stone walls all over the countryside, and the rock piles which were enlarged year after year by rocks picked up from the filed as they were prepared for cultivation. Another method of disposing of large rocks was to sink them by digging a hole at the side and tipping them over into it. Even so, many extra large rocks were left in the fields, which interfere greatly with present day machine work. To return to the chimney, it was built with five flues to serve five fireplaces, two of them in the front upstairs rooms. The one in the main room served as kitchen, dining room and living room is large enough to accommodate a 4-foot cordwood stick. It also has a brick oven and ash pit. There are 9 rooms in the main house with a large open chamber and full size attic. The present ell was added nearly 100 years later to replace a small summer kitchen. The rooms are large (15 by 16) to provide for the large families of those times. Samuel Blake had 19 children. The flooring is of wide boards. The boards in the main room are 20 feet long. All of the downstairs doors are of the Christian type except for one narrow cupboard. All doors had latches.

The upstairs rooms were not completely finished off until Civil War times when it was easy to obtain competent labor from skilled artisans, men working their way to Canada to escape the draft. It may have been at this time that the windows with small panes were replaced with four pane windows. Four of the original windows were left in the attic, two at each end.

Other changes to modernize the house have been the removal of corner posts in the east front room or parlor, changing of several latches to doorknobs, and papering over wide paneling. All of the fireplaces were bricked up. We have opened two of them and probably will open the others.Seven generations have enjoyed the privilege of living in this old house. If the walls could talk, what interesting stories they might tell!!