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A Historic Westbrook Home is Restored

It was a likely a cold brisk morning in February 1765 when Nathan Post agreed to give 100 acres from his land grant to his son Joseph Post. Eight months later, on Oct. 31, 1765, the day before the Stamp Act took effect, Joseph rode to the office of the Saybrook Colony to officially record the conveyance deed. Two hundred and 50 years later, owners David and Elizabeth Mathus marked the home’s 250th birthday with a celebration on Aug. 6 that hearkened back to the Colonial era when the home was born.

In a nod to that era of local militias and their musical corps, the day opened with the Westbrook Drum Corps playing Colonial-era music as members marched in uniform toward the home from the distant fields. The sound of fifes and drums floated through the humid hot day’s air, taking the watchers back to an earlier time, a time before the American Revolution had even begun

Aspects of the celebration re-enacted moments of early Colonial life. Westbrook residents and farmers John and Bonnie Hall offered rides in a wooden cart pulled by two of their American milking Devons, a legacy breed from colonial times. Representatives from the Connecticut River Museum demonstrated early rope-making techniques.

But the main event was a guided tour of the restored home led by owner David Mathus in the role of both docent and historian. In each room, he described the home’s construction, its materials, its features. In the room now used as a library, he spoke about the displayed documents and historic photos from the history of the home and its past owners.

Peeling Back the Years

One week after the 250th year party, Mathus took a small group on a private tour of the home, the garage, and the property.

Asked how he became interested in buying and restoring a historic home, Malthus tied his interest to his college days. While attending William and Mary College in Williamsburg, he developed a keen interest in American history, which led him to work with the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.

For years, his work and family commitments put his dream of a historic home project on hold. Finally, in 2002, he was ready. The candidate he chose was the home at 998 Pond Meadow Road in Westbrook. It had good bones when he bought it, but it was only in fair condition. He and his wife Elizabeth decided it was exactly the home restoration they envisioned. They bought it.

For the project’s initial phase, the goal was to clear the acres around the homestead that had become overgrown. This work returned the land beyond back to open farm fields surrounded by stone walls. John Palermo was the contractor that helped them with this work.

The final project phase was the restoration of the historic home itself. Four years ago, working with neighbor and builder Paul Bransfield, they began developing the project plans.

The main floor was tackled first. Unfortunately, the keeping room floors, all chestnut, were in poor condition, but the builder discovered that the attic floor was also made of chestnut planks, so those were moved downstairs to replace the old flooring. The hand-hewn chestnut beams in the keeping room ceiling were mostly in good condition.

An interior wall was removed to enlarge the main living space slightly. The wing that housed the historic home’s summer kitchen also was opened up. Older homes had summer kitchens to keep the heat from the open hearth cooking separate from the main living areas.

Renovating an antique home poses unique challenges. For starters, a trip to Home Depot for drywall and 2x4s isn’t much of a help.

“There are no straight lines in the house,” Malthus said. “All of the wood in the house is original.”

And that wood is chestnut wood, a building material that disappeared in the 1930s when a chestnut blight destroyed all the American chestnut trees.

Selectman John Hall explained that the home’s original foundation was likely dug out by an oxen pair pulling a turnpike shovel.

A reproduction painting of what the old homestead would have looked like in 1765 hangs over the main keeping room’s granite mantle. All of the home’s original fireplaces, including the main one in the keeping room, were still intact when the Malthus family bought the house. For safety reasons, each received a liner in the renovation so the family could use the old fireplaces safely.

Walking up to the second floor, Malthus pointed out an unusual feature—the main room that the family now uses as a master bedroom has a barrel ceiling. He explained that this space was used by the owners in earlier times as a ballroom.

History in Every Corner

One of the historic documents that the builder discovered during the restoration was a Dec. 22, 1839, tax assessment notice from the town clerk for Silas Post, the property’s owner in that year. There his home’s value is listed as $800, the 145 acres of land at $1,600, two horses at $70, eight cattle at $168, and 55 sheep at $55.

Silas Post, like his father and grandfather, was descended from Stephen Post whose name is listed on the founding monument for the City of Hartford. The house remained in the Post family’s hands until 1920 when it was sold to the Leitners, according to Mathus.

As was typical in prior centuries, when goods or vehicles could no longer be fixed or used again, they were buried and disposed of at a site on the property. Over the past decade, another family project has been to slowly unearth items buried in the Post family’s onsite dump pile.

David and Elizabeth Mathus placed artifacts of that dig on display for visitors at the party: An array of old nails. Collections of glass bottles of various sizes and colors. Early American pottery pieces, assembled into their original forms with a jigsaw puzzlers’ skill (and glue). Tools, farm implements, and even gutter tops monogrammed with an R installed by the home’s owner in the 1940s, actor Stanley Ridges and his wife Dorothea.

Ridges played the commanding officer in the 1941 movie Sergeant York

starring Gary Cooper and Walter Brennan. Two years before he bought the property in 1938, he likely became familiar with the area when he was cast with Katharine Hepburn in a play at Ivoryton Playhouse. But Ridges and Hepburn apparently did not get along so he did not follow her—or the play—to Broadway.

“It was Ridges who saved the house. He placed steel I-beams underneath the chimney stack,” said Malthus.

Ridges owned it from 1938 to 1952. Mathus said that Ridges’s best friend at the time was Westbrook local and actor Art Carney.

In 1952, the home changed hands again.

Ralph Stein, the principal illustrator at Yank

Magazine in World War II and of the Popeye cartoons in the 1950s, was the home’s next owner. When he moved in on April 23, 1955, he arrived with full moving van hoping to find local help to unload it. Unfortunately, everyone was out of town that town that day attending the wedding of the parents of John Hall, the farmer with the herd of American milking Devons who lives nearby, and is also a Westbrook selectman. When the Steins moved to Westbrook, the population was just 1,500 people. Stein built an art studio across the street to use as a workspace. He died in the 1990s and his wife, in the 2000s. That’s when David Stein took ownership, selling the property then to the current owners, David and Elizabeth Mathus, in 2002.