One update after last Wednesday’s talk. The night before, fleshing out a slide show, I went back up to the attic to look at the 1798 Federal direct property tax valuation page pasted on the partition wall under the eaves, and took a closeup of what I realize is Thomas Allin’s signature, since it is pretty clear that this valuation was filled out in his own hand:
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Only then did I realize that it is not every day that one finds, in an eighteenth-century house, the builder’s signature pasted to a wall! This seemed to make an impression at the Preservation Society meeting.
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