FREEPORT

The dirt road to Pettengill Farm in Freeport winds through a tunnel of evergreen trees, dappled with white from an early morning snowfall.

Owned by the Freeport Historical Society since 1975, the unique saltwater farm is prized by locals not only for its 140-acre campus laced with walking trails, but for the untouched antique house whose walls record the lives of its inhabitants spanning two centuries.

“There was a deliberate decision made not to restore the house to a time period,” said Freeport Historical Society Executive Director James Myall, who toured the acreage and aged saltbox home on a recent chilly morning.

“It’s been kept in a certain state to let you see the layers of history in the house,” said Myall. “We had to do some work to the foundation to stabilize the house, but inside in some places you can see right down through different layers of wallpaper to the original lath and plaster.”

The wind whistled by the windows and through the uninsulated walls of a sitting room overlooking an estuary of the Harraseeket River, where on a November morning in the early 1800s a fire would have glowed from a wide brick hearth.

“One of the things that makes the property really unusual is this connection between the land and the sea,” said Myall, noting that the farm is listed on the National Registry of Historic Places. “We tend now to think of marsh as unproductive land, but when the property was first purchased around 1790, that salt marsh was some of the more valuable real estate associated with it.”

Not only was the hay from the fields shipped via the river, said Myall, but at various points in the 19th century when there was livestock on the property, cows grazed on the saltgrass and sediment from the marsh was used to fertilize the fields.

“Very little is known about the Lufkin brothers who built the house around 1800, but we do know that they sold it relatively quickly,” said Myall. “The Pettengill Family had a big impact on the house as the last residents who occupied it, and the other family of significance is the Rodick family.”

The head of the Rodick family, James Rodick, was a sea captain, who lived on the property from 1831 to 1861 with his children.

It is hypothesized that the Rodick family is responsible for one of the most intriguing features of the house — the drawings carved into the plaster walls of the second story bedrooms.

The historical society refers to the drawings, which are largely nautical in theme, as “sgraffiti,” named for a decorative technique wherein layers of plaster are etched away to create contrasting designs.

“These are a bit of a mystery,” said Myall of the sgrafitti. “There is one date that is carved in — it’s 1829 — but there is no way of knowing if that is actually connected to the drawings, if they were all done at the same time or over several years.”

Reflecting very different levels of skill, from crude shapes roughly scrawled to intricate reproductions of famous naval warships, some historians have posited that the ships were etched by Captain Rodick, who would have had a knowledge of rigging, while the rough sketches were drawn by his children.

“Some of the ships have names on them and we know they are ships that fought in the War of 1812,” said Myall, such as the Lawrence, carved as LARNC on the wall, that was engaged in the Battle of Lake Erie in 1813 .

“You can see the writing on them, there are spelling mistakes and some of the letters are transposed,” said Myall, noting a British vessel, the HMS Macedonian, spelled with a backward “S,” which he said had contributed to speculation that they were children’s drawings.

However, the sole etched date and the vessels from 1812 predate the occupation of the Rodick family, said Myall, possibly indicating the involvement of earlier inhabitants.

“There are all these different questions that we can’t quite answer, though it’s pretty intriguing,” said Myall. “Maybe we’ll never quite know the answer as to where they came from.”

Protected for decades under layers of wallpaper, the etchings were not known of until after the acquisition of the house had been negotiated by philanthropists Lawrence M.C. Smith and Eleanor Huston with the home’s eponymous final resident, Mildred Pettengill.

“They purchased the home from Mildred under the condition that Mildred could continue living there as long as she lived,” said Myall. “Her grandfather Charles purchased the property in 1877, but his son Wallace Pettengill lived there with his children Mildred and her younger brother Frank.”

Mildred, born in 1882, lived in the home until the early 1960s, said Myall, which highlights another of the house’s uncommon characteristics — it was never updated to provide for modern amenities except for an early telephone line.

“The house has never had electricity or running water, so even when she was here in the 1960s it was still very much the way of life of the 19th century,” said Myall. “Even in frigid January they had to draw water from a well and use a privy” located near the house.

Most of the furniture has been removed from the home, which is locked throughout the year and opened by historical society docents by appointment only.

On the second floor, however, a small wooden bedframe remains, which is believed to have been Mildred’s childhood bed.

For more information about Pettengill Farm and the Freeport Historical Society, visit www.freeporthistoricalsociety.org, or call 865-3170.