Eric and Dianne Martin have been lovingly restoring one of the three oldest houses in Henderson County – and the only one of them that still looks pretty much like it did when it was built.
Craven Boswell came from Orange County, North Carolina, in 1805 and staked out a large swath of land in eastern Henderson County.
In 1807 he moved his family and slaves to the land, erected cabins for temporary housing, and began laying plans for his new home. Rock for the foundation was hauled from a bluff on the Green River, brick was made on site, and timber was cut on the property and hewn by hand.
Some sources say his house on Boswell Road was built in 1808, while others put the date at 1810. Records at the Henderson County Clerk’s Office, however, show Boswell didn’t acquire land here until 1812. But by all accounts, he was the first settler in the Hebbardsville-Bluff City area.
It was about 200 years before the Martins moved in. They consider it their lucky find.
Eric is from Owensboro originally, but Dianne was raised 18 miles from New York City. “I always wanted to live in the country, and Dianne said if we could find an old plantation home, we could move there,” Eric said.
But they weren’t even looking when they found it; they were searching for a neighbor’s house. “It’s one of those stories you see in the movies,” Dianne said. “We missed her house and turned around to come back when I spotted this.”
Eric initially was reluctant to pull in the driveway, but she insisted. Dianne was immediately entranced with the age and look of the house, but it took nearly three years of negotiations to acquire it in 2006.
The former owner “liked that we were going to save the house,” Eric said. “Other people wanted to buy it and tear it down.”
It was in rough shape when they bought it, and they didn’t move in for two years. The east wall of the house was bowing badly and had to be reconstructed. Both chimneys also had to be taken down and rebuilt. Eleven weeks were spent restoring the original plaster strengthened with hog hair. They also put on a new roof, and the entire addition at the rear, which was built during the 1920s, was gutted and rebuilt.
Great care was taken to preserve the house’s original features, many of which remain.
“We left everything,” said Dianne. “We still have the original windows, the floors, the mantels – I wanted everything original.”
One reason the house has lasted more than two centuries is that it has solid bones. Eric found only one damaged area in the floor joists, which still show marks of being squared by hand. Many of the timbers were put together with mortise and tenon joints, firmly held together with wooden pegs.
“All these walls (both interior and exterior) are solid brick, three bricks thick,” Eric said. “There’s no lathe.” The plaster was daubed directly on the brick walls.
“The house is about 210 years old, and the floors don’t even squeak. The railing on the stairway doesn’t even move.”
At one point the plantation had many accessory buildings: housing for slaves, a smokehouse, and a log barn built by Boswell that lasted at least as late as the mid-1970s.
The house and a hand-dug well lined with rock are about all that remain from the original plantation. Plus about 30 acres of woods, which the Martins had selectively logged. That provided much of the money for the restoration effort.
So, what’s left to do?
“We’re pretty much done with the inside,” Eric said. “There’s not much else we can do to restore the house. But we still have many things on the list that we’re doing.”
“Eventually, we’re going to do a little bit more with the kitchen,” added Dianne. “The main thing was to get it restored.”
The remaining work mostly involves landscaping. For instance, they would like to build a patio, someday, out of limestone blocks they already own. They would like to widen the front porch that Eric built, so they can enjoy the pleasant view, and they also plan to restore a brick pathway that Dianne discovered barely poking out of the mud near the front door.
Their main intention, though, is to enjoy their house with their six dogs.
“This is a really well-kept secret, this house,” Dianne said. “So many people don’t know about it.”
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