The Peter Burr House - Architecture & House History

The Peter Burr House - ca. 1751, oldest wood frame home in West Virginia

Architecture & House History

The physical structure of the Peter Burr House is important for its:

Architecture that is unusual for this location

The New England style roof diminishes snow accumulation and the structure does not sit directly on the damp ground where it would be more prone to rotting.

Workmanship that has allowed a fully wooden house to survive for 260 years

All ceiling beams, chair rails, and clap boards are hand beaded

History that can be learned through the different stages of changes in the house

1930s

1966

1998 South and West Elevations

The Peter Burr house, located a short distance north of the Route 9 in Bardane has been identified as the oldest standing wood frame structure in West Virginia.

The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1981 by the West Virginia Division of Culture and History. In the nomination form, its importance or significance is attributed to these factors:

The Peter Burr house is one of less than a dozen structures in the state that survive from the pre-1760 period, constructed around 1751, only twenty years after the arrival of the first white settlers;
The Peter Burr house is associated with the prominent Burr family, being built by Peter Burr, an early settler and a cousin of Aaron Burr; and
The Peter Burr house is an extremely rare example of an early settlement homestead; the remaining 5 structures of this period in Jefferson County are stone or partially stone and are more representative of the manor house or large estate-oriented building.
In addition, a 1988 survey conducted by Dr. Charles Hulse indicates the presence of significant archaeological deposits on the site of the house.

While it is only necessary to meet one criteria of significance, the Peter Burr house meets all four criteria of significance for listing on the National Register of Historic Places.

Architecture

Note the following photos were made October 1998 while the earliest work by the Jefferson County Historic Landmarks Commission was in process. Information below was also created about the same time the photos were taken. Speculations exists that some of the facts below may be subject to newer information.

East End of South Wall and Porch

The Exterior

The earliest frame section of the one bay centered door (D 105) dwelling faced a few degrees to the west of south. The wide south facing front door opposed an equally wide north facing door (D 101) on the north end of the house. The only other opening in the north wall was a small two over four light narrow sash double hung window (W 102). There were four windows on the east wall all the same size, four over four light double hung sash. One window faced into each of the two rooms on the first floor (W 105 and W 106) and two rooms of the second floor (W 203 and W 204). There were no other openings to the exterior of the house except for the five windows and two exterior doors opposing each other. There was a small sash mounted into the east gable at the attic level.

East and South Elevations, South Porch

The house was constructed on a field stone foundation laid into a shallow trench. An expertly executed pre-manufactured sophisticated framing system very similar to the Connecticut area and New England in general fimming systems was erected enclosing a footprint of roughly 16 feet wide by 26 feet long not counting the porches. The building was a full one story with a half story on the second level. There was an attic and no basement. The structure was placed inches above the cleared ground.

The frame of the building was executed of hewn, mortised and tenoned white pine timbers with complicated joinery. The sections of the frame that were exposed to interior view were hand planed and beaded.

The doors to the building were board and batten, planed smooth and hung on strap and pintel hinges. The windows were set into finished jambs, with expertly made wide muntm sash that held glass. The windows and doors were trimmed on the exterior as well as the interior.

The exterior wall stud cavities were filled with brick nogging after the hand riven oak clapboards measuring approximately 50 inches long were installed. The exterior clapboards were skived at each end to overlap the adjacent clapboards. The entire exterior of all four walls was originally covered with the riven clapboards. The clapboards were held in place with hand made rose head nails.

The roof was sheathed with spaced wood lath and covered with riven and shaved wood shingles. While none of the original shingles survived in place, there were several original shims made from the early shingle scraps that were split and riven.

There was a massive stone fireplace system built inside the west wall of the house. A large cooking fireplace faced into the southeast kitchen and a smaller room heating fireplace faced north and at a right angle to the kitchen fireplace into the north bed chamber. The two flues, one for each fireplace, were built of carefully chosen stones by a master mason. The flues were lined with a good lime putty entrained mud mortar.

North and East Elevations, North Porch

The chimney above the roof was stone up about two feet from the lowest point and had a typical drip lip of thin stones just above each roof slope. The upper section of the chimney had a single stone corbel just below the top edge of the stone. It was possible the stone chimney was topped with a few courses of decorative brick. There remains a few courses of brick on top of the stone chimney. It is not likely the current brick was original. However, in the attic was found a single piece of decorative brick that map have been used to cap the chimney. There was one other piece of mid 18 century brick found reused as chinking in the log addition. Both bricks were coated with whitewash.

To the north and the south were five and six foot six inch projecting porches respectively. The porches were roof projections of the long main house roof slopes. The roofs over the porches were held up by decoratively beaded, chamfered and lambs tongued posts and beaded header beams. The south porch retains outriggers that were beaded. The porch roof components were beautifully executed and made an inviting entrance into the dwelling in an otherwise rough wilderness.

The entire exterior of the house was whitewashed.

Interior

The first floor plan of the house consisted of two rooms. The larger south room (R103) was the kitchen and the small north room (R102) was a bed chamber.

There was a stair landing space on the second floor (R203), but the majority of the second floor was divided into two bed chambers. The larger bed chamber (R201) was to the north while the smaller one (R202) was tucked into the southeast corner of the second floor. Both main levels of the house were fully floored with hand planed tongue and grooved boards surface nailed to the joists.

There was a set of decoratively beaded second floor joists exposed as part of the ceiling to the first floor. There were scribed in place baseboards, beaded main posts and summer beams as well as girt logs and the flooring to the second floor was beaded on the under side where the boards were exposed to the first floor. The perimeter interior surfaces of the walls were finished with plaster applied over the brick nogging and the stone face of the fireplace. There was a brick hearth at each of the two fireplaces.

The interior doors were also board and batten in construction and were hung with crudely made "T" and "H" and "L" hinges. There was at least one thumb latch and at least one string pull latch. The other original hardware was not determined.

The second floor was accessed by a staircase built into the space between the end of the massive stone chimney and the south wall in the southwest comer of the large kitchen room. There was a vertical beaded board wall that hid the staircase from view and contained two doors. One step was outside the beaded board wall in the kitchen room next to the south exterior door. A board and batten door was opened to access the rest of the stairs which steeply climbed and wound around in a full half circle to the landing on the second floor next to the chimney. The 180 degree tight winder staircase had an pie shaped steps and the steps had both treads and risers nailed together. The steps radiated off a central pivotal newel post. The second door in the vertical board wall in the kitchen was next to the fireplace and would have accessed a small storage space under the stairs.

Manufacture, Erection and Finishing of

Frame House Period 1 ca. 1751 - 1757

Peter Burr Senior, along with several other prominent members of the Fairfield, Connecticut community, probably traveled to Jefferson County about 1748. Within a five year period Mr. Burr had located a piece of ground suitable to his needs and acquired the 406 acre piece of land in June, 1751. Since the summer season was in full swing by the time the purchase of the ground had been completed, all that Mr. Burr was likely able to do that summer was to begin to lay out for his fields, clear the site and gather stones for the shallow foundations of the house. In addition to the house activity, Peter Burr may have begun to lay out other such necessary buildings as would be needed to establish a farm in the wilderness as well as roads, lanes, fields, etc.

An experienced builder had to have built the house. One did not merely observe the house form in his old town or passing through somewhere, remember the idea, and then built this structure. The casual viewer could not have observed the series of complicated joints such as at the comer posts and top plates. He could not have determined from such a view how to lay out the frame. A high degree of skill was needed to execute the upper post champfering and molding where they flared out to support the front and back top plates. However, with such a large land holding, it was apparent Burr was to focus on establishing a farm and on farming.

Burr may have hired a professional house builder known as a housewright, to manufacture and erect a frame according to his design. Unless documentation is uncovered that identifies Mr. Burr as a master housewright, he did not build the house. He had the house built for him by a professional builder. (Note: Some controversy exists on this assumption, as evidence clearly does exist that Peter Burr was from a line of builders. This documentation dates back to Senior's immigrant great grandfather. There is documentation that Peter Burr Sr. had a saw mill on his property when he died. There also is documentation of a Peter Burr who built a saw mill in 1737 in Georgetown "at the intersection of Florida Hill and Old Redding Road." There is no confirmation yet as to whether or not he himself was a housewright, but the notion is certainly not unlikely either.)

The frame section of the house built for Peter Burr was expertly fashioned. The timbers, posts, joists, beams and summers were all skillfully hewn and many were planed smooth. The complicated joinery took a great deal of experience to lay out and cut the joints to fit so closely. The timber was cut green and roughly manufactured to size while green. However, the frame does not appear to have been raised while green. The drying and shrinking process would have caused some of the beams to split open and check widely to the interior faces exposed on the interior of the house. Some of the joints would have pulled apart and possibly split.

By hiring a professional housewright to manufacture and erect the Peter Burr House, he and his men would have been able to secure the timber, cut the rough pieces and have the stock drying while building other houses. In the winter time when the weather was not good for working the larger timbers, the men would have been in a shop producing moldings, doors, sashes, rough and finish [page 12] jambs and baseboards. Wall boards for the partitions and flooring was run or planed smooth and tongue and grooved by apprentices working with a journeyman. The sash was made by the most experienced men on the team. A blacksmith was employed to make the pintels and strap hinges as well as the latches, slide bolts and nails. It was possible that a professional housewright could have had the parts for the Burr frame fashioned as early as 1752, but nothing could have hastened the drying of the timbers. At least a year or two passed while the timbers were drying and the various lumber products made and stockpiled.

It is most likely that the timber for the Burr house was cut as early as the first winter of 1751/1752. The winter cutting of timber was done while the sap was down and allowed a better quality of timber to be harvested. Another reason for winter cutting was that the large timbers could be easily dragged to the construction site by draft animals over snow covered roads and fields.

The housewright may have been his own mason, but the massive two fireplace, two flue chimney was so finely built with the rhythm to the flue stones being so regular it appeared that a professional stone and brick mason was on board the construction team.

The shallow foundations can only be seen in two areas to their full depth of approximately 12 to 18" below grade. While most of the original foundations were not observed, the few areas seen indicated that many of the stones had moved and the bedding mortar deteriorated to the point that almost none of the mortar now exists. The foundations do not appear to be of the same quality as the chimney. This could have been because the Burrs tried to do their own foundations and later hired a professional builder, or because the professional housewright's men laid the foundations who were not as skilled as the chimney builder.

With the frame up, the roof would have been covered with long wooden smooth oak shingles set with a long exposure to the weather and nailed at the lower outside comer of each shingle. All the window and door jambs would next have been installed. Corner trims would have been set and then the process of siding the house begun.

Hand riven long and smoothed oak clapboards measuring an average of fifty inches long were used. They were set in even horizontal rows nailed where each clapboard crossed each vertical stud. All four exterior walls were covered with the clapboards during the initial construction of the house.

The wall cavities between the studs were filled with bricks bedded with almost pure mud. The bricks were of very poor quality perfectly suited for use between studs out of view and out of the effects of weather.

It is at this point in the construction process that the house could have been moved into and occupied for a year or two to allow the house to further dry and settled into place. There would have been floors and at least a ladder to access the second floor. What would have been missing until the frame was thoroughly dry was the brick nogging and plaster walls.

Brick nogging was added both as an insulating factor and a plaster wall ground sometime shortly after the house frame was erected and allowed to dry. Very poor quality bricks were used for the nogging as was the practice of the day.

Poor quality bricks were common in early brick firings. The bricks furthest from the fire and with the poorest materials did not harden and would easily crumble to the effects of the weather. They were easily spotted by their orange color, deformations and ease with which they broke into smaller pieces. The worst bricks from a kiln firing where set aside for use as nogging which remained a common practice throughout the 18th century and was used well into the middle of the nineteenth century.

The brick nogging in the Peter Burr house where it can be seen with little disturbance and no weathering such as under the west wall siding was set in place in two to three foot lifts. At the arbitrary stopping points selected by the person installing the nogging, rough split boards were nailed over the top row of nogging to the studs on either side. There were three to four such lifts to each vertical stud cavity. The purpose of the horizontal boards was not determined.

The brick nogging was installed after the exterior siding. The mud used to bed the bricks into the cavities squeezed out from between the bricks and packed against the siding. Where the siding has either been removed or fallen off the oak grained imprinted mud can still be observed.

The reason all the analysis of the building process was important was due to establishing the dates of the structure and the process of construction. The building was not quickly erected. It took several years for large timbers to dry and therefore not shrink after they were joined and erected. It appeared the timbers were cut, rough dimensioned, allowed to dry, joined and raised into a frame after a few years of time passed from the cutting of the trees to the setting in place of the brick nogging and the installation of the exterior siding.

With the hiring of a professional housewright for the building of his permanent house, Peter Burr was living in the unfinished house sometime possibly as early as 1753 or 1754 and no later than 1776 when Fithian visited. It was definitely in the third quarter of the eighteenth century that the house was constructed, but there are so many variables that to establish the dates any closer is only guessing without proof.

Restoration

The Jefferson County Historic Landmarks Commission took ownership of the Peter Burr House and began the tedious task of assessing how to restore the house while assuring that all repairs maintained the historic integrity of the structure. Many replacement pieces had to be specially made as modern fixtures would not be period correct. Before restoration could begin, numerous assessments were needed. Following are the room-by-room assessments with photos and details of the condition of each room.