WHen I was a tiny girl there was an old Dr W Van FLeet rose blooming out in the middle of one of our pastures. It was supported by a timber framework in the shape of a box and spilled out so huge around me as a tiny 3 yr old. PArtly I remember because I have a photo of my 5 yr old brother and myself in front of it, but I really think I remember the sense of wonder at its thousands of blossoms as gently pink and fragrance as a new baby's skin. Later, when Dad sold the work horses and bought a tractor he moved the roses to an area along a creek that ran through a grove of seedling damson plums. As a teenager, it was my special get away place, just out of sight of the house if one sat down the bank near the water, which babbled along over the stones. THe plum trees were magic in spring when they were a cloud of pale pink, then followed by the rose, which must have climber huundreds of feet through the trees. I can still remember looking up at the puffy clouds moving through the blue sky and thinking the pale fragrant roses were among the most beautiful things on earth! And yes, I have one now that I started as a cutting from a friend's mother after Dad purposely killed the rose and cut down the plum trees. (He was a farmer who fought "wilderness") Mine has filled the fence and now mingles with the grapevine and really needs to be tamed, but when it blooms I am in touch with the little girl still in me 60 years later!

HIBRITTEN WAS ONE OF THE MOST EXPENSIVE FURNITURE SOLD IN 60'S AND 70'S AS MY GRANDFATHER WAS IN THE FURNITURE BUSINESS. MY MOTHER'S DINING ROOM TABLE HAS 4 LEAVES,(WHICH MEASURES 120") TWO ARM CHAIRS, 6 SIDE CHAIRS, WITH BOX SEATS AND TO THIS DAY THE UPHOLSTERY STILL LOOKS LIKE NEW! THE CHINA HUTCH WAS 76" LONG 84" HIGH AND A SEPARATE BUFFET WAS ALSO 76" THAT AT THE TIME WAS $10,000.00 AT COST AND MARK-UP WAS 110% I WOULD GET SEVERAL APPRAISALS. OR BETTER YET MAKE SOME ROOM FOR IT AND HAVE SOME WONDERFUL FAMILY MEMORIES, BECAUSE NO ONE WILL APPRECIATE IT LIKE YOU!

Are the cup and saucer the same pattern? Is there a mark on the cup? It's very very pretty....something says to me Chinese... And bone china is English....those pieces sure look Chinese or Japanese and like high fired porcelain, not bone china. Maybe you can find the mark on the site below. Linda C Here is a link that might be useful: Chinese marks

I'm glad to hear you have gotten more info about the house. That's the Holy Grail for all old house owners. Something I noted in your last post caught my eye: (quote) "The house was a post and beam house. The original sills are on the house and you can see that there was a spot for the joists to slide in, mortise and tenon style." An intact post and beam house will still (mostly) have all the mortise pockets filled, not empty, with joists and diagonal braces firmly attached with treenails (wooden pegs). A few pockets may be empty and visibly never used (minds change and mistakes happen before the house was constructed), and the odd one empty one here or there may indicate after-construction structural changes that are important to take note of. But having all, or most, of the visible mortise pockets empty indicates that the house was constructed, or reconstructed, using salvaged timber and is now assembled by some other framing system. Simply put, a very few empty pockets is par for the course in a very old building, but having several-to-many indicates something else altogether. You need to find out or know which it is and what that means. What, indeed, is holding it up and together now? You also noted: (quote)"The basement strangely enough is not completely block. The foundation is fieldstone from the ground to about 3 feet and then block the rest of the way up." This may indicate that a building was once torn down and reconsructed (or even brought from another place) after the height of basement was raised (the pic seems to show some ground elevation changes). Barns and outbuildings weren't typically over full cellars. (It's an awful lot of work to dig cellar holes by hand, esp. in rocky places like CT). Even houses, especially early ones. sometimes had only modest cellars for the same reason. These spaces were used to raise the house away from ground moisture, reduce flooding risk and for cold storage. The height and overall massing of the building as it appears in your pic, would be unusual for a chicken house espcially given its purported age. Organized agriculture of the kind that would have included anything as formalized as a two-story chicken house wasn't very likely 175 years ago. In those days, it was very common for most households to keep a few chickens, or purchase them from very local and small-scale operations. There was no reliable refrigeration to support mass production of eggs or fowl for the table. Household surplus eggs were waterglassed, but meat birds were on the hoof (or on the claw as it were) until just a few hours before they found themselves in the stewpot. If further exploration of your house's history indicates it is a later assemblage of second-use materials, perhaps on top of a (laterly raised cellar), don't despair. This simply means that you have possession of living evidence of the respect early householders had for the inherent human capital and economic value of all materials at hand. Since they couldn't just hop on down to Home Depot and order up a truckload to build the new structures, they reused and repurposed what they had. A fine value system; we should emulate it more. It does present some thorny tangles for us in building-reading, however. Plus many modern-vintage building materials will scarcely outlive their warranties, so reusing them is pointless. (I had one roofing contractor stop by after the tornado and try to sell me on the idea of installing his Best Quality 25-year warranty product, instead of repairing the holes in my 120 year-old, and still in excellent shape - except for the hole made by the tree during the storm, slates with other slates. I chose to go with the slates, needless to say.) L