Clement Weaver-Daniel Howland House - Structure Description

Structure Description

The house was at first a one-room plan, one-and-a-half stories high. The walls of the house were constructed using wide vertical boards over a post and beam structure. Norman Isham’s drawings indicate four additions were made to the house prior to 1712. About a year after it was originally built, the first addition was a one-story lean-to along the northern side of the house. This was to become the original kitchen. This lean-to was brought up to the height of the original house in 1681 to create two garrets above with a center chimney and entry. The chimney of stone and homemade brick was never exposed on the outside end of the house. Another lean-to was built along the back (western side) of the house to create the traditional salt-box shape remaining today.

Well-known historic architect Norman Isham was commissioned by the Howlands to restore the Weaver farm house in the 1930s. The Howlands donated the restored home to what was then called 'SPNEA' – The Society for Preservation of New England Antiquities as a memorial to Daniel Howland. SPNEA has recently changed its name and is now known as Historic New England. During Isham’s restoration, workers found the original builder had used seaweed for insulation.

The first lean-to addition was the first room restored during Isham’s 1930’s restoration. The entirely restored room presents an excellent picture of a 17th-century residential interior in Rhode Island. This room contains two of the original square-shaped, single casement, leaded glass windows. These windows were carefully restored and re-hung where originally located to provide some of the best evidence available of 17th-century windows. The room retains the huge fireplace surrounded by many of the original hand-planed, feather-edged, vertical pine boards, along with batten doors with wooden latches and strap hinges. The ceiling is exposed oak beam and both the floor and ceiling above are wideboard.

The last 'original' addition of a single-story kitchen ell with a stone-end chimney of its own was made about 1712. These particularly constructed chimneys were later referred to as “Rhode Island Stone-enders.” Only a couple of these chimneys survive. The ell was built off of the southern wall of the keeping room. This latest kitchen has an enormous fireplace with a small oven. There is outside evidence of an original beehive oven which may have either fallen or been removed.

The keeping room of the original house is its largest room and has an impressive system of framing with its original posts, girts, and exposed summer beams of solid oak and chestnut. The ceiling is exposed beam. The wide board wall sheathing was at some point covered with plaster as it remains today. There is also a very early corner cupboard opposite the enormous fireplace. It has what appears to be the original, planed, single plank, batten door along with two hand-wrought, butterfly hinges. The oak chimney trees (fireplace lintels) throughout the home are enormous as well as completely petrified. This author's own observation, far less than scientific, would indicate that based on the size of the trees used in construction as well as when they were installed, would make much of the wood in the house close to a millennium old.

The sheathed entry hall between the keeping room and the older kitchen contains a rare "split" staircase. To one side the staircase contains six steps while the other contains seven. These staircases were built at different times to reach the garret above the older kitchen. The older kitchen is now called the “museum room” because it was the first to be restored and has been structurally maintained as original as can be. Stairway sheathing was carefully cut on a diagonal to facilitate the moving of furniture. All of what appear to be the original vertical boards are still there.

Howlands willed the home to SPNEA to be restored and opened as a museum. Correspondence maintained by (formerly-named) SPNEA, indicates the home was returned to Mrs. Howland when it became too expensive for the agency to maintain. It is believed that the rest of the house was then restored by Isham for its new owners in the 1930s.

The home contains six fireplaces. Both the kitchen and museum room have fireplaces almost ten feet wide and five feet tall. The museum room fireplace has a round top oven built into the back wall. Both garrets (bedrooms) above each possess a fireplace. The room currently being used as a dining room has a smaller fireplace believed to have been appropriated for the heating system exhaust.

The southern wall of the main house retains several original clapboards preserved when the 1712 kitchen ell was added on. These original hand-riven clapboards appear to be made of oak and have been feathered and lapped while being fastened to the vertical sheathing with large, hand-wrought nails. One must go into the eaves behind the garrets and walk into the attic space above the kitchen ell to view these clapboards.

An addition was built off the back of the kitchen which sits perpendicular to the main house. This addition follows guidelines of both the U.S. Dept of Interiors’ Restoration Standards and the local historical board of review. While ‘modern’ in design, the room was built in such a way that it could be “unzipped” from the original house. The guidelines specify additions constructed on a historically significant house must be done in such a way as to reflect the present period style to avoid confusing future historians as to when the addition was actually built.

The recent non-fiction book “Killed Strangely” by Elaine Crane indicates Clement Weaver served as a juror in the murder trial of Rebecca Cornell from the family of Cornell University fame. The book includes information from Jane Fiske’s edition of Rhode Island Court Records, and a photograph of the "museum room" fireplace as a comparison to the home Cornell was murdered in.