Henry Reece-William Walton House
89 W. Franklin St.
 

Date:  1838

 
Features:  The building is a four-bay hall and parlor cottage with double front doors.  The doorways have paneled woodwork, cornices and five panel doors.  The windows are 6/6 with "marching soldiers" lintels.  The house includes dental frieze under boxed gutters, a little roof overhang on gable ends, and corbelled gable end interior chimneys.  Limestone is placed with larger and smaller stones forming a pattern similar to Flemish bond brickwork using grapevine mortar.  There is outstanding interior woodwork including cupboard, fireplace and winder stairs to the attic and cellar along the west wall and an additional fireplace on the east wall.  The winder stairway to the attic has metal rings in the wall, placed conveniently to grasp while climbing the stairs.

 
Owners:  Henry Reece from Lebanon owned the lot for almost a decade before selling it to Zenos Hines.  The Reeces were Welsh and known as stonemasons.  Reece was probably responsible for building the limestone home.  Hines was a carpenter and plasterer, born in Maryland in 1804.  The house changed hands frequently until William and Miriam Walton purchased it in 1927, remaining until Mrs. Walton died in 1971.   Her nieces and nephews, descendants of Colonel Edward Deeds, gave the house to the Historical Society for its headquarters and museum.

 
Other:  The grounds include flower and medicinal gardens.  The grounds also contain a reconstructed early sawpit and forging site for education programs on early building techniques.  A Depression-ear privy was moved to the back of the lot about 1990.