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01/28/2016 11:00 PMThe Guilford Preservation Alliance is awarding $7000 in grants to further scientific study of some of Guilford's most historically significant buildings. The grants will fund a completed study at the Hyland House (84 Boston Street) and upcoming research at the Thomas Griswold House (171 Boston Street) and Guilford's "Pest House" (405 Tanner Marsh Road). The research will be conducted by the Oxford Dendrochronology Laboratory, which has dated more than 900 buildings over the course of three decades.
In November 2014, Dr. Daniel Miles, who heads the Oxford laboratory, conducted a
dendrochronology study of Guilford's Hyland House. Dendrochronology is the science of
measuring the age of trees based on the number and size of their rings. A tree will form a new
growth ring each year. The width of the ring will vary based on the tree species, the amount of
rainfall, and other factors. After studying wood cores removed from the Hyland House, Dr. Miles
and his colleagues concluded, "the primary phase of the house was constructed in 1713."
In late 2015, Guilford town historian Joel Helander urged the Guilford Preservation Alliance to
support the work done at the Hyland House and to expand this cutting-edge research to two
important Guilford buildings: the Guilford Keeping Society's Thomas Griswold House and the
Guilford Pest House. The GPA Board of Directors, led by President Shirley Girioni, agreed that
scientifically rigorous study of these two landmark buildings is very consistent with the GPA's
mission to preserve and protect the built and natural heritage of the town of Guilford. The Alliance has a preservation and restoration fund to support work of this kind.
The Thomas Griswold House is a classic New England saltbox on the National Register of Historic Places. Thomas Griswold III built the house in the eighteenth century on land that had been in the Griswold family since Thomas Griswold II moved from Wethersfield, Connecticut, in 1695. The Guilford Keeping Society maintains the building as a museum and a showplace of late eighteenth and early nineteenth century Guilford.
It is believed that the house currently at 405 Tanner Marsh Road is the oldest "pest house" in the United States. A "pest house" is a building used to quarantine people with highly infectious diseases, such as smallpox, tuberculosis, and cholera. Smallpox epidemics occurred with devastating regularity in colonial New England. In the spring of 1760, the Guilford Selectmen voted to set aside land and build its own quarantine structure. Town minutes indicate that the house was built by 1775 on land bordering the East River near Tanner Marsh Road. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, an effective smallpox vaccine became available and, Helander explains, "nearly all of Connecticut's Pest Houses were destroyed.... It was generally assumed that the Clapboard Hill Pest House had met a similar fate." However, Helander's research suggests that the House was not destroyed, but moved from its original location to 405 Tanner Marsh Road. The dimensions of the house and the construction techniques strongly suggest it is the original Pest House. The dendrochronology study will provide another crucial piece of evidence.
Dr. Miles and his colleagues will begin the dendrochronology study at the Pest House and the
Thomas Griswold House later in 2016. This research project is one of many recent collaborations undertaken by the Guilford Preservation Alliance, including leading the Guilford Heritage Tourism Initiative and introducing the new electronic tourism kiosk and the Guilford community website http://www.visitguilfordct.com. For more information on the Guilford Preservation Alliance, please on the Guilford Preservation Alliance, please visit http://www.guilfordpreservation.org.