Demolishing the Summer Kitchen

We had to take this down almost immediately after moving in, due to our home owners insurance not liking it.  Luckily we had Peter's family step up to help, along with a couple new-us-neighbors. 

Dormer Windows added after 1900. 

Doors to the summer kitchen.
Not sure what the left hand one was for.  It was very narrow. 

A daunting task, just to clean it out.  

We hired Mahan Slate to remove and save all slate tiles for us. 

Peter looking down through the hole that the log elevator went through.  

Door to 2nd floor kitchen.  

There was a small workspace built into the end of the attic space.
It had horsehair plaster and two very thick wood slab work benches. 

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Up there, that is where the 5-seater outhouse was.  

We ended up hiring someone with a log truck to help take down the largest beams and get them into the barn for storage.  

The diagonal beam stretches from this photo to the next.  It was the back beam , and is one solid piece that ran the entire  length of the summer kitchen. 

Bits and Pieces...the history of Spruce Corner

Spruce Corner is located in the southwestern corner of Ashfield.  It borders on the towns of Goshen and Plainfield which are both in Hampshire County.  At one time Spruce Corner had its own post office, wagon, and blacksmith shop (later a gas station and store), and several mills, including those operated by the Williams, Dyer, Gardner, Thayer and Luce families. 

The two earliest known settlers of Spruce Corner were Elisha Cranson from Spencer and Ephraim Williams from Easton.  Other early settlers, most of whom served in the Revolutionary War from their respective communities and arrived in Spruce Corner after 1780 were: Lot and Deborah (Howes) Basset from Yarmouth; Comfort Beal(s), Jesse Dyer, John Ford, Joseph and Tamer (Jackson) Gurney, Isaiah and Lydia (Hersey) Jenkins, Jr., and Laban Stetson from Abington; Stephen and Dorcas (Whitney) Warren from Upton; Caleb Packard and Solomon Sally (Hollis) Hill from Bridgewater.
Ephraim Williams came to Spruce Corner in 1771 to build a saw mill on land owned by his father, Daniel, but he did not own land there until November 1774. 

In June 1775 Ephriam Williams, was accused of being sympathetic to the British.  However, the Committee of Correspondence voted "not to take any notice of Ephraim Williams a suspected Tory" and "voted that if there should be a complaint laid before the committee against any person as being a Tory and not supported the complainer shall be liable to pay the cost  of the committee sitting..."