After looking at more than 100 houses in New England, Frank and Sharon Riley knew they had found their retirement home when they discovered Francestown’s historic Bixby Tavern property. 

“It was just what we were looking for. It has the high ceilings, the Federalist style.It had the larger hallways and it was more spacious,” Frank said. “It was perfect.” 

Drivers passing the house often slow down to admire the manicured property, particularly the holiday decorations. 

“I am maybe a little obsessive about details,” Frank said with a laugh.

Frank, who most recently lived in Georgia, grew up in his grandparents farmhouse in western Massachusetts, and Sharon is originally from California. The couple always wanted to retire to a historic house in New England. 

The Bixby Tavern has played an integral role in the history of Francestown. There was a home on the land as early as 1789, which, according to the Francestown Historical Society, was the fifth house built in Francestown village, and was later moved further down 2nd NH Turnpike. In the early 1800s, the Hodge family built a second house on site . 

In 1821, Peter Clark, a captain in the Revolutionary War who fought in the battles of Bennington and Saratoga and was the founder of the Lyndeborough and Francestown pottery factories, bought the house and expanded it almost to the size it is today. 

When Peter Clark died, the house passed to his business partner, Paul H. Bixby. The Bixby family ran the home as an inn and tavern into the middle of the 20th century, and townspeople have called the house the Bixby Tavern ever since. The Bixby Tavern was used as an overnight stop for people traveling from Boston to Montreal by stagecoach. 

To honor the history of the Bixby Tavern, Frank constructed a reproduction “tavern room” in the back of the house. The bar is an exact reconstruction of the one at Longfellow’s Wayside Inn National Historic Site in Sudbury, Mass.

“Twenty years ago, I was in the Wayside Inn with my son-in-law, and I said, ‘Someday, I am going to have a bar like this,’” he said. 

Frank still has the photographs he and his son-in-law took that day, which he used to create his own tavern room. 

Master carpenter Eric Grenier, who did most of the restoration work on the home for the Rileys, worked with Frank to create the bar to the exact specifications of the bar at the Wayside Inn. 

“It’s called a cage bar. It could be locked, and people could keep their valuables in it overnight,” Frank said. 

The bar is complete with a sink, refrigerators and German and Irish beer on tap. A wide curiosity shelf, which Frank designed based on one at the Blue Bear Inn,  houses memorabilia from the Rileys’ time living in Germany from 1985 to 1990,  where Frank was a civilian employee for the military. Nearly every room in the house contains handmade German toys and a tiny German Christmas trees with spun-cotton ornaments.

Upstairs, the “German Room” contains a rare antique four-poster bed and teddy bears from the Steiff factory near the Black Forest.

“Mrs. Steiff herself actually signed all of our bears,” Frank said. “Living there at that time was really an wonderful experience. You would walk into these little shops, and it would be all these handmade wooden toys. Each one was the only one; you couldn’t get another one.” 

The Rileys renovated the Bixby Tavern over the course of several years while they were still living in Georgia. 

“About a year after we bought the house, when it was sitting empty, the heating system failed, and the whitewash on all the walls cracked, and we had to replaster all the walls,” Frank recalled. 

The Rileys removed the old failed steam heat system throughout the entire house, replacing it with a modern boiler, mini-splits and ductless AC. Almost the entire house now has air conditioning.

The house has 10 working fireplaces. Eight are original, and the Rileys added two more, in the kitchen and in the tavern room. In the chimney behind the dining room fireplace, Frank demonstrated the  “flow chamber,” where Colonial-era residents would smoke meat by letting the smoke “flow” over it as it hung on hooks. 

The original home had servants quarters, including a steep, narrow “maid’s staircase” leading from the kitchen to the back hallways upstairs. 

All paint colors from the historic Williamsburg collection are from Benjamin Moore.

“If you go to Williamsburg, these are the colors you will see,” Frank said. “There is nothing in this house that was a not a color that was actually used at that time.” 

In the front two rooms, the windows  have rare  “Indian shutters.” The shutters on the top half of the window fold in, while the ones on the bottom half of the window slide together like pocket doors.

“You don’t see these very often,” Frank said. 

New additions to the home include a mud room, laundry room and first-floor master suite with an accessible bath. The Rileys’ daughter- in-law,  an architect, created the plans for the new additions.

Just inside the front door is one of Frank’s favorite features, a room he and Sharon call “The Buttery.” Based on a Colonial-era pantry, the room now displays antiques from the Rileys’ collection as well as storing food and household items. 

In the parlor, a hand-painted mural of Francestown Village 200 years ago, painted by Jennifer Noonan, adorns a rectangular panel over the fireplace. The mural depicts the Bixby Tavern, a brick house next door, the original schoolhouse, skating pond and church. 

“It really hasn’t changed much at all,” Frank said.