Deborah Lynn Courville

In the Time Before Deborah Lynn Courville

In 2016, during the renovation of the foundation at The Oldest House in Laceyville, three beams from the Keeping Room were harvested and sent to Cornell University for dendrochronological testing. The results came back that, while two of the beams had been from trees cut in the 1780s or later, one was from a beam that was from a tree felled prior to that, possibly as early as the 1750s. These three beams may not have been enough to definitively date the construction period of The Oldest House, and more tests are planned. However, the discovery of the date of the oldest beam gave rise to speculation that there had been some kind of dwelling or structure near or on the site of The Oldest House before The Oldest House was built. We know from historical record that nothing was wasted back then: if even a shack had some re-usable parts, they were salvaged and incorporated into new structures. That much is fact. What follows is fiction. When the beams were removed, a part of the fireplace in the Keeping Room came away, revealing a concealed cavity. Inside, wedged in a corner, was found a large ledger-type book with several sheets of foolscap folded and stuffed inside the front cover. This proved to be an almost daily journal, starting with entries in the fall of 1759. That journal was written by one Abigail Gilchrist, and apparently hidden away before Madam Gilchrist left the premises. Those premises were a cabin, whose structure comprised a central chimney with a large room built around it. Part of the north side of that room was carved into the bank, so it was effectively underground, forming a root cellar and a larder. Other features of the cabin, as detailed by Gilchrist in her journal, no longer remain, nor do the other structures on the land nearby, including a barn and outbuildings. However, the main part of the cabin survived and, when the House was purchased in the 1780s by Dr. William Hooker Smith for his son, James, it was remodeled and enlarged, with a second and then a third story added. The original cabin became the House's central Keeping Room, which is still in use today and can be seen at The Oldest House. This is the story of Abigail Gilchrist, a woman from the twenty-first century, and her extraordinary adventures in the eighteenth.