Red House: Being a Mostly Accurate Account of New England's Oldest Continuously Lived-In House

Summary (from the publisher): Sarah Messer's Massachusetts's  childhood home had sheltered the Hatch family for 325 years when her parents bought it in 1965. The will of the original builder and owner Walter Hatch - which stipulated that Red House was to be passed down "never to be sold or mortgaged from my children and grandchildren forever" - still hunt in the living room along with Hatch family photos. Weaving the stories of the Hatch and Messer families, Red House explores the strange and enriching experience of growing up with another family's birthright. Answering the riddle of when shelter becomes first a home and than an identity, Messer has created a classic exploration of heritage, community, and the role architecture plays in our national identity.

 

Review: "'It's about growing up with someone else's history,' I said. 'It's the story of the house.' [...] 'There were daguerreotypes of your great-grandfather on the fireplace mantels,' I said, looking at Josh, 'not our'" (314).

 

In 1965, seemingly on a whim, and because he fell in love with the house, Ronald Messer changed his plans to move to California in favor of buying a ramshackle house near Boston. For uncertain reasons, Robert Warren Hatch had decided to sell Red House, which had been in his family for eight generations. Red House was built in 1647 by Robert Warren Hatch's great-great-great-great-great-grandfather Walter Hatch, and was one of the earliest houses built in the area.

 

Walter Hatch was born in England in 1623 and immigrated to Scituate in New England in 1634 with his parents and five siblings. At the age of 24, in 1647, he bought some land in Two Mile and began building a house. Over time, and as the house was passed down to subsequent generations, it was updated. Rooms were added. Fires burned down sections that were rebuilt. Outbuildings appeared and disappeared around its perimeter over the years. But the central Red House remained when Dr. Messer bought it in 1965. Along with four children from his first marriage, his four younger children, including daughter and author Sarah, would grow up in Red House. It was cold, it was ramshackle, it lacked modern conveniences, and most of all it was filled with another family's history. In this world, Sarah and her sisters grew up.

 

This book is told in alternating sections of the history of the Hatch family and the house, and memoir of Sarah's memories of the house. As the book progresses, the sections collapse closer together, with Sarah's chapters increasing including history when she moves back to Red House as an adult and begins efforts to restore it along with one of her older sisters. I expected to enjoy the historical sections most of all, but I truly enjoyed the more lyrically written memoir sections. This may also be due to the relatively sparse historical details shared - although the ones shared were captivating. Like the transition from Israel Hatch III who would have worn pantaloons and tied his hair at the nape and his son Joel, who would've learned proper grammar and pronunciation at school. Whereas his father said "pint of the knife" and "spile," his son in the next generation said "point of the knife" and "spoil" (137). And the revelation that a previous resident had painted the walls inside in a leopard pattern, and the fact that the house was red because it was the cheapest paint at the time. I also was intrigued by Sarah's descriptions of supernatural experiences within the Red House.

 

I was frustrated by Messer's difficulty in getting the facts straight from her father over the purchase of the house and his eventual fallout with the last Hatch owner. I was also frustrated by her father's refusal to allow the house to be X-rayed to determine its historical origins. Additionally, I would have loved a more comprehensive history of the Hatch family and each generation of owners. However, overall this was a fascinating history - of historical houses, of the evolution of home over time, on the history of domestic life in America, over the nebulous boundary between your family's history and another's. I'm glad the Red House still stands and is currently preserved for future occupants, but I'm just as glad its history has been documented and shared with readers.

 

Stars: 4