When Will Poole and his husband Loren Poole moved into one of the oldest houses in New Ipswich, they had no idea that it might contain a deeper connection to their family history.
Their home, located on Porter Hill Road in New Ipswich, dates back to 1790, when it was built for the eldest son of New Ipswich’s first town minister.
For a house with such a long history, the farmhouse has a short list of families who have owned it. Among them was the Cartwright family.
Will Poole said he was unaware of the house’s history when he and Loren purchased it. They were looking for a place big enough to accommodate Will’s chocolate-making business and perhaps one day re-invigorate its use as a bed and breakfast. But as he was digging into both the house’s history and his father’s family tree, he noticed a common name: Cartwright.
That might not have been so unusual, Poole said, except he found that some of the New Ipswich Cartwrights had left the area to move to Lincoln, Nebraska – where his branch of the Cartwright family was from.
“I may be related to the Cartwright family. I keep asking anyone who is a local villager with a long family history to see if I can find some of the Cartwrights to see if we can find the common connection,” Will said.
But whether the connection is official or not, Will said, it’s made him feel as though the home was meant to belong to him.
“I feel like when we bought this house, we really did come home,” he said.
The stately farmhouse was originally built in 1790 for Stephen Farrar Jr. – the eldest son of New Ipswich’s first town minister.
Rev. Stephen Farrar Sr. came to New Ipswich in 1756 at the age of 21, and he lived in the town until he died. For most of his life, he lived a short distance away from his children, who had homes and businesses around the Center Village. He spent the last years of his life living with Stephen Jr. in the Porter Hill Road farmhouse until his death in 1809, and his widow, Eunice, lived there until her own death in 1818.
In addition to being a private residence, the property was also the location of several businesses, including a hat shop run by Stephen Farrar Jr.’s brother, Caleb Farrar – the foundation stones of which are now part of the Pooles’ garden – and a pottery, which has left pottery shards in the yard that the Pooles have found. Stephen Farrar was the owner of a mill, probably the first in town to produce wheat flour.
The house remained in the Farrar family, lived in by Ephraim Hartwell Farrar, who remained there until his death in 1851. Ephraim was a teacher, who taught in Boston for nearly 20 years before returning to New Ipswich to live. Ephraim was a town clerk for 14 years, and a trustee of Appleton Academy until his death.
More recently, from the 1980s until the Pooles purchased the property, the home was used as a bed and breakfast.
Now Poole is using the home as a base of operations for his chocolate-making business, Porter Hill Sweets.
Ashley Saari can be reached at 924-7172 ext. 244 or asaari@ledgertranscript.com. She’s on Twitter @AshleySaariMLT.