When Roberta Oeser bought her home in Rindge in 2002, she didn’t plan to keep it for long.
“I sold my house and there was nothing on the market I wanted to buy,” she said.
So she bought the big yellow house near the center of Rindge. She planned to keep it for a bit, figuring it was a good investment while she continued to look around for her dream home.
“Well, that plan lasted about two days. I just fell in love with it,” said Oeser.
This is the third home in the region Oeser has owned that was built in the 1700s. She’s a real estate agent, so she’s interested in old houses and she has an eye for potential.
Right away, she knew she needed to cut down some of the trees around the front and back of the house to open up the exterior. She took off the black shutters, which the house wouldn’t have had when it was built, anyway. The inside feels light and bright. Much of the original woodwork is preserved around doors and windows and the floors. Her apartment on the left-most side of the structure, originally the south-facing front, has decorative elements that are not seen through the rest of the house. She guesses that this section was used as rooms when the house was an active inn and tavern more than 200 years ago.
Judith Drury, who had spent summers in the home, contacted Oeser after she moved in. Oeser gave her a tour, which Drury wrote in a note in 2003, “brought back fond memories,” and Drury sent Oeser a history of the property that her grandfather, Ernest Hale, had written. It started with Solomon Cutler.
According to Hale’s account, Cutler was a farmer and innkeeper. He moved onto the land around 1771, but it’s unclear exactly when the house was built. While he lived on the property, Cutler was a Rindge selectman and soldier in the Revolutionary War.
Dr. Thomas Jewett owned the home after Cutler, sometime before 1839, and it stayed in his family until 1864. Hale wrote, “In the treatment of a malignant fever, which prevailed with startling fatality throughout a large portion of New England, in 1811 and 1812, and which was generally called the spotted fever, his success was exceeded by few, if any, physicians in this vicinity.” Jewett kept the farm active while he lived in the house and eventually retired from medicine to farm full-time.
The house passed through a number of other people, including another selectman and an Army officer. Then it was foreclosed by Monadnock Savings Bank. Stephen Hale bought it in 1880, and then his daughter lived in the house with her husband before the house was sold to Drury’s grandparents, Ernest and Ruth Hale. The house was a summer home, and around 1952 they sold it and bought the house across the street. Since then, it has been owned by a few other families, and at one point the barn was used as an antique shop.
Under a section of his document labeled “Interesting Notes,” Hale wrote about items at the house that were previously part of the the Methodist Congregational Church before it was moved to West Rindge — the stone step in front of Oeser’s front door, and heavy pew doors used as cattle doors in the barn. He also mentioned that “The old well is covered by two grave stones and is under the present back terrace.”
Oeser pointed from her back porch to the headstones resting against the limb of an apple tree. She had been quite surprised to find them. Now she keeps them in her garden plot where her dogs are buried.
“It’s the longest I’ve ever lived in one house,” Oeser said of the 20 years she has lived there. And since moving in,“I’ve done a lot.” The house has needed maintenance, painting and renovations. Oeser sealed up the attic and improved fuel efficiency, but she has kept the historic nature of the space and gathered a lot of information.
She opened a wicker chest in her living room. It was full of files, photos and documents about the house. In looking at photos, the structure of the home hasn’t changed much. It was a different color with shutters, but there were the double doors with the huge spiral hinges in the center of the home that now lead to apartments three and four, and the stone path to the well. In one photo, two men lounge below a metal sign attached to a tree. It reads “Sky-High,” the name of the home.
She held up a framed record from 1936. At the top was ‘“Sky-High’, Rindge, NH.” Below was a list of work that had been done. At the top of the list was the purchase price: $4,000.
The current building is split into four apartments, including Oeser’s and three others that are rented, connected to an old barn. The barn was moved from the back field and connected to the house in 1883. Oeser has hosted Halloween parties there; she said the acoustics are great for a band.
There are two cellars under the house. Between the two was a space where the tavern stored liquor.
Oeser explained that elements of the home like the decorative woodwork, closets and big rooms are a sign that the people who historically lived here had money. Almost every room has one, if not two, closets and plenty of windows.
“This house has enormous closets, which denotes wealth,” she said.
Oeser said the house has kept her constantly busy. She recently uncovered an old patio out back and she has done a lot of gardening.
“I find old-timey plants,” she said, and takes them to the farm across the road to learn about them.
Like many of the old owners, Oeser served on the Rindge Select Board and has added her own touch to the house. A couple years ago, she painted a mural of the Betsy Ross flag with 13 stars on the side of the barn.
Oeser said in the old photos the house had been a mustard-gold color. Now it’s painted “lamplight yellow,” and, she said, “later in the day it shines.”