The Linton House, ca. 1695-1711 - Castleton University

The Linton House, ca. 1695-1711

Before it was moved to its present location on Planting Field Way in Edgartown, the old Sara Crafts 9/23/10 3:03 PM
Linton house stood on the shores of Vineyard Haven Harbor, in the little settlement once known
as Eastville on present day East Chop. It was believed to be one of the oldest houses on the Comment: Parentheses part of quote? Or should
Island, though no one seems to know exactly how old it is, or who built it. C. G. Hines in his be brackets, by JS?
Story of Martha’s Vineyard has said this:

The Oliver Linton house is so sensitive about its age that no one really knows
when it was built. Some claim that it is the oldest house on the Island, but this
claim seems to be based on a brick in the chimney bearing the date 1615. This
ante-dates the Mayhew coming by so many years that the brick would seem to be
a – well, mistake.1

Hines wrote this in 1908, thirty-four years before the house was moved, and this author has been
unable to discover the whereabouts of the dated brick. However, one could conjecture that the
third numeral, a “1,” might have been damaged and the original could well have been a “7” or a
“9” giving us a date of 1675, or more plausibly, 1695.

The house was in the Linton family for five generations before it was purchased and
moved by Mabel Farr in 1942. Presently it is owned by James Barker of Duxbury and
Edgartown. In the 18th century it can be traced back to Thomas Claghorn who ran an inn here
from 1730 to 1783, known as the famous “Claghorn Tavern.” Four years after Thomas’s death in
1787, the executor of his estate, William Claghorn, sold the house and land “bounded on the
northwest by Holmes Hole harbour, and on the southwest by the property of John Cossens (late
of Edgartown)” for fifty-three pounds, fifteen shillings, to Wendall Davis.2 Two years later, Mr.
Davis sold the property to Sarah Davis “widdow woman.”3 In 1797, Sarah Davis sold the place
to Elijah Hillman “Mariner.”4 And in 1808, Elijah Hillman sold the house and adjacent property
for $800, to Joseph Linton.5 In this way the house passed into the Linton family. The legend
recorded by Henry Franklin Norton that this was a Daggett house “which came into the family
by the marriage of Joseph Linton to a Dagaett [sic] [Sarah]” may have some truth to it, but in
terms of the succession it is incorrect.6

Banks records that Thomas Claghorn came to the Island from Barnstable in about 1721.
His father, James Claghorn, also an innkeeper, had come to the Vineyard five years or so before
him. Thomas bought property in Edgartown “on the line” in 1721,7 but in 1730 he evidently had
moved to Eastville where it is recorded that he was an innkeeper from this date until his death in
1784. His wife continued to run the inn for another two years after his death.8 Banks says this of
the tavern community at Eastville:

Most of these taverns were in one neighborhood, convenient for the shipping
interests, which furnished the most of their patronage. That they were the scenes
of jollity at night when “Jack” came ashore is evident from what we know of their
character. John Cousins (Claghorn’s neighbor) was indicted in 1733 “for sufering

[sic] Disorders in suffering fiddling [sic], singing & Dancing” in his tavern, but
the jury acquitted him.9

Because the tavern was started in 1730, Banks has concluded that this was the date the
house was built.10 However, the story is not so clear, as both the deeds and a study of the house
indicate. The deeds show that Thomas Claghorn’s first purchase in Eastville was not until 1734,
four years after the tavern operation had started.11 This suggests that he must have been renting a
pre-existing structure on the property before he made his purchase four years later from John
Butler. A first-hand study of the house also reveals that the house was most probably built a
generation or more before 1730. For example, we know that Island houses of the 1720s and 30s
were built incorporating the more convenient location for the bread oven besides the cooking
fireplace, but this house has the earlier fireplace structure with protruding cheeks and the early
style of bread oven in the rear wall of the hearth. The exposed posts and summers, hand-hewn
with pronounced chamfers, and the lima bean latches on the two front room doors are also
suggestive of an earlier date than 1730. We come back to Henry Franklin Norton who insists that
this was a Daggett house. He says:

One of the most interesting houses on Martha’s Vineyard is at Eastville and is
known as the Old Linton House. It was built by a Daggett about the time of
Queen Anne’s reign, and after two or three generations came into the Linton
family…12

Queen Anne reigned from 1702 to 1714, and this makes more sense to me as a date for the
original house than 1730. In fact, the deed from John Butler to Thomas Claghorn in 1734 makes
mention of land formerly in the Daggett family. Six parcels of land were included in this deed as
well as “tenements,” and at least three of the parcels were stated as formerly belonging to “Ellie
Daggett.” Ellie or Alice Daggett was the daughter of Alice Sessetom, the Indian “princess”
(daughter of the Sachem Wampanoag) who married Joseph Daggett and whom Banks calls “The
Vineyard Pocahontas.”13 At the end of the 17th century, the area at the end of East Chop, which
later included Eastvillle, was Indian land. Banks says this:

The extreme northern end of the easternmost chop became a settlement apart and
distinctive before the eighteenth century. The nearest settlers were at Major’s
Cove and Farm Pond and a stretch of several miles separated them from their
neighbors. This locality, next to Chappaquiddick, was the last stand of the Indians
of the town, and during the following century and a half, the smoke from their
wigwams rising skyward could be seen from any house in this region.

The sachem Wampamog, in 1669, gave the first tract of land here in
severalty to the sisters, Alice and Keziah Sessetom. …Part of this land
subsequently descended to Daggett’s [Joseph Daggett, Alice Sessetom’s husband]
daughters, Esther and Alice, the half breeds.14

It was the land of Joseph Daggett’s daughter, Ellis or Alice, passed down to her through her
mother’s side, that Thomas Claghorn later purchased with “tenements.” Briefly this area was
known as “Daggett’s Neck.”15 A Daggett house built here about the time of Queen Anne may
have belonged to Alice Daggett with likely dates between 1695, just before her first child was

born, and 1711, when she died. If the chimney brick reported by Hines was written with a “9” as
the damaged third numeral, 1695 might well be the date for the early part of the house. This
would mean it was occupied and sold in the reign of Queen Anne. We must note that Alice’s
sister, Esther, who co-inherited the land, married Edward Cottle and must have lived nearby.
Banks says that he had a dwelling house there “as early as 1695 … and he may be reckoned as
the first [white] settler of the region subsequently known as Eastville.”16 Alice Daggett never
married, though she had three children.

Putting this all together, we believe that Thomas Claghorn took over a small cottage or
half house when he moved to Eastville. This house may have been built thirty-five years or so
earlier for Alice Daggett and would have been the house that she raised her small family in.
Thomas Claghorn probably extensively rebuilt and expanded the little house in the 1730s to
accommodate the needs of his new inn-keeping business.

It is evident that the house was once a half house, as the different size and detailing of the
front rooms, and the off-center chimney in the early Banks’ print of the house indicate. The
slightly smaller west front room measures fourteen feet four inches in length and depth; an exact
square. The ceiling height to the bottom of the summer beam is exactly half the lateral
dimensions of the room: seven feet two inches. These beautifully regular dimensions lead us to
believe that this was the original part of the house. The west summer beam is of the large early
type, measuring just under nine and one-half inches in width, and is nicely dressed and
chamfered with a three-quarter inch bead. Curiously, the extension of the summer beam in the
former back kitchen is narrower by two inches, and is very roughly dressed (probably because it
is in the work area of the house). The difference in dimensions indicates that this cannot be the
same beam that continues through the house. The probable conclusion is that Claghorn removed
the old narrow kitchen and deepened this area of the house for the extensive cooking and
entertaining functions that would be required in a tavern. In doing so, he added new longer
summers in back, and to accommodate the added depth of the house, he lowered the pitch of the
roof (we note that this house has a lower pitch than is customary on early Vineyard houses). The
eastern front room is the same depth as the western room, but is five inches wider; fourteen feet
nine inches wide by fourteen feet four inches deep. Here, the summer is only seven and three-
quarter inches wide, but this narrower dimension seems typical in mid-18th century Vineyard
houses. We believe that this eastern part was also added by Claghorn in the 1730s or later. With
all this, he was in no small way responsible for building the house as we see it today.

Probably in the present century, the chimney was completely rebuilt (possibly when the
house was moved), and a transverse hallway was put in beside the central stack leading from the
front hall to the back room. The old cooking fireplace has also been rebuilt, and made smaller,
but the cheeks extending two feet into the room are an early feature, as is the rear bread oven.
From the hallway there is a small compartment in the chimney for the storage of valuables. The
well-known seaman’s tavern on the water may have been subject to plunder during the
Revolution and the War of 1812 when British warships frequented Holmes Hole harbor. Norton
reports that,

Recently [this was written in 1923] while the house was being repaired, bullets
shot from some British man-of-war were found embedded in the timbers.17

Many of the original twelve splayed posts can still be seen. All of the summers and girts are of
pine, and all in the back room were left rough-hewn and unchamfered. The roof was the typical

Vineyard purlin roof with six pairs of rafters. The eastern gable is horizontally boarded with one
and one-eighth inch pine planks. One of these measures twenty-three inches in width. I was

unable to discover whether the planking was horizontal or vertical in the older western half of the
house. The overall dimensions of the house are thirty-seven feet six inches wide by twenty-nine

feet five inches deep.

Fig. 20A. The Claghorn Tavern in Eastville, ca. 1730. Later known as the Oliver Linton
house. (Drawing from Banks.)

Fig. 20B. The Linton house, formerly the George Claghorn Tavern. Earliest part (the left
half) built by a Daggett, ca. 1695-1711. House moved to Edgartown in the 1940s.

Notes

1 C. G. Hines, The Story of Martha’s Vineyard (New York, 1908), p. 73.
2 Deeds 14:120.
3 Deeds 14:121.
4 Deeds 14:122.
5 Deeds 15:349
6 Henry Franklin Norton, Martha’s Vineyard: The Story of Its Towns (Hartford, Conn. 1923), p. 54.
7 Deeds 3:481.
8 Banks, History, Vol. II “Annals of Oak Bluffs,” p. 48.
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid. See caption to picture on page 48 which reads, “The Claghorn Tavern, built around 1730. Now the
Oliver Linton House” (written before 1910).
11 Deeds 6:8. Also see Deeds 8:250, 7:296 for further descriptions of the property.
12 H.F. Norton, Martha’s Vineyard, p. 54.
13 Banks, History, Vol. II, “Annals of Oak Bluffs,” p. 43.
14 Ibid.
15 Deeds 3:43.
16 See Banks, History, Vol. II, “Annals of Oak Bluffs,” p. 44, and Deeds 5:305.
17 Norton, Martha’s Vineyard, p. 55.