Here is the tale of a 23 year old man who framed this beautiful home in 1826 and then later married a a young woman 17 years younger than himself. Lydia was the sister of his brother's wife. They all lived here together for a brief while; the two brothers and the two sisters, as separate couples. When (double cousin) children began arriving, the arrangements changed…
This story was published in 1981 while the home was owned by the Yeaton Family.
THE YEATON HOUSE
The Yeaton House on the West Road in Belgrade, now occupied by Miss Donna Yeaton, has always been in the possession of the Yeaton family since it was built in 1826 by Donna's grandfather, Paul Yeaton. He designed the building himself. It is a sturdy, beautiful house, with two chimneys and six fireplaces, with twin brick arches down cellar to support one set of fireplaces, and a granite arch to support the other set.
Down cellar, also, is grandfather Paul's workshop, which contains some of the tools he manufactured himself. It took him a week, Donna said, to make the lovely wooden fan that is over the front door. In the workshop is the fireplace, still intact, complete with crane for the smaller iron kettles. To the left the brick work continues as a round brick box, which once held a large iron kettle used for heating water.
The Yeaton house was a "raised" building, as evidenced by the corner posts in some of the rooms. It has been left, for the most part, as it was originally built, except that the two small bedrooms off the kitchen have been enlarged, and a connecting link has been built between the house and the woodshed and barn beyond.
The present kitchen has always been the kitchen. It has a long, very high mantel, made from one board, over the brick work that contains the fireplace, now closed off, and the brick oven and the ash pit. The brick oven door, of iron, is decorated with raised leaves arranged around the movable draft, which is shaped like an upside down fan. If you open this door, you can still smell the smoked ham scent which lingers in the brick oven from the days when hams were smoked over a corncob fire.
In a cupboard over the kitchen mantel Donna's father Edwin always kept his shaving materials, and on a Sunday they were taken down for the long and careful process of shaving in preparation for the observance of the Sabbath. Another cupboard, larger but shallower, is placed against the same chimney, but it opens into the entryway that serves the side door of the house. Christian doors, another mark of grandfather Paul's careful workmanship, are found throughout the house.
In the Yeaton house are many lovely and interesting pieces of furniture, much of which belonged to a previous generation. A half-settle came from the Wallace Nutting workship in Framingham, Massachusetts. Made of hard wood, maple perhaps, it has a little catch-all box for a seat, and on the inside cover of the front door is a Nutting creation also.
Mr. Nutting, famous preacher, furniture expert, author, and lecturer, was a lifelong friend of Lillian Powers Yeaton, Donna's mother. As children the two lived in the community of North Manchester, and attended the same church, then known as Scribner Hill Baptist Church. Lillian was brought up by the Virgil Scribners, who lived in the house just south of the church.
There are a few pieces of furniture in the Yeaton house that came from the Scribner home in North Manchester. The three Windsor chairs, for instance. Donna's mother Lillian remembered vividly having to wash those chairs every week. The square piano in Donna's parlor is one that was bought for Lillian in 1874, when she was fourteen years of age. The piano, now 107 years old, is still in good condition. Outside the house, near Donna's garden, is a beautiful smokebush that came from the one still growing on the edge of the old Scribner cellar.
Donna has two vases that came from the Scribner house. One is a majolica-type vase, which is on the mantel above the parlor fireplace. The flaring trumpet part of the vase is a smoky blue, the base a mottled brown. From the base grows a brown-and-blue serpentine vine which bears green leaves and small trumpet-like flowers. The other vase is of Parian marble, urn-shaped, thin, white with handles coming straight out near the throat of the urn. A bunch of grapes is at the base of each handle. There are grape leaves and even delicate tendrils in the clusters.
On the 1879 map of Belgrade from "Atlas of Kennebec County" by Caldwell and Halfpenny, there are eleven houses bearing a Yeaton name. One "L. Yeaton," has a hotel. Yeaton names appear in the list of town officers given in Kingsbury's "History of Kennebec County." The year after Belgrade was incorporated as a town (1796) Paul Yeaton was listed as one of the three selectmen.
This Paul was a Revolutionary soldier, and he came from New Hampshire in 1794, when Belgrade was known as Washington Plantation. He would become Donna Yeaton's great-grandfather, and he lived to be 96, date of death was 1856. According to Kingsbury, in 1816 also known as the year "Eighteen hundred and froze to death," Paul Yeaton was clever enough to raise twelve of only twenty-five bushels of corn which was Belgrade's total corn crop for that cold summer.
The Yeatons first settled on the Dunn Road in Belgrade, then built on the West Road, farther north of the present Yeaton home, the one that Paul, son of the first Paul, built when he was twenty-three years old and unmarried. His brother Andrew and wife Eliza Goodrich Yeaton lived in the house first and Paul stayed with them.
One day, in 1830, Eliza's younger sister, Lydia Ann, age 10, was coming across the fields to visit Eliza and Andrew. Looking ahead, she saw a nice young man standing in the doorway of the house he had built. If, as they say, great events cast their shadow before them, Lydia should have experienced a thrill, because she was looking at her future husband. Paul Yeaton and Lydia Goodridge, despite the difference in their ages, were later married and lived in one part of his house, while his brother and family lived in another part.
A door to the left of the fireplace in the parlor was the one the sisters used as they visited back and forth. When brothers marry sisters, their children are called "double-cousins," so Paul and Lydia's children would be double cousins to Andrew and Eliza's. When, by 1848, the children of the latter couple numbered five, they thought it was time to move.
Across the road was a nice location on a small hill, and here the Yeaton brothers built another house. This is the house which Donna occupied while her brother Paul and his wife lived in the older homestead and brought up their family. After the death of her brother and sister-in-law, Donna moved back into her childhood home.
The Yeaton family have been well-known musicians, playing with instrumental groups and singing in choirs. They would sing among themselves around the old square piano, just for the love of singing. When Wallace Nutting came back to the Scribner Hill Baptist Church to have one of his Old Home Gatherings, as he called them, the Yeaton family always attended, and the name of Paul Yeaton, Donna's brother, appears on one of the program booklets as a member of an instrumental trio which played a prelude to Mr. Nutting's worship service and accompanied the congregational hymn singing.
Donna's father had a wonderful tenor voice and he and her mother Lillian, who was a soprano, often sang duets together. Edwin taught singing school in Belgrade in the days when singing schools were popular. Edwin's first marriage was to Frances Haskell of New Glouster, Maine. Their only daughter, Carolyn, or Carrie as she was called in the Kennebec County History, studied music in Europe and taught and performed in New York City. She married the editor of Scientific American and the Science Editor of the New York Times.
Carrie spent summers on the farm in Belgrade and gave piano lessons to pupils in the town. One of her puplis was Donna, her half sister, twelve years younger. This arrangement necessitated practice periods right at home, under the watchful eye, or ear, of a sister-teacher, and no musical mistakes could be tolerated. Excellent training, certainly, but not appreciated until later in life.
The Yeaton family church is the one at the corner of West Road and Route 135. Grandfather Paul helped build the church in 1826, and it was dedicated in 1928. The Yeatons bought pew number 24, the receipt for payment of which, Donna still has in her possession. Now known as the Old South Church, it used to be called the Rockwood Meeting House. It is a lovely rural church, non-denominational, and is open six months of the year, from May to October. Donna, a nonagenarian now, attends every Sunday.
THE YEATON HOUSE
The Yeaton House on the West Road in Belgrade, now occupied by Miss Donna Yeaton, has always been in the possession of the Yeaton family since it was built in 1826 by Donna's grandfather, Paul Yeaton. He designed the building himself. It is a sturdy, beautiful house, with two chimneys and six fireplaces, with twin brick arches down cellar to support one set of fireplaces, and a granite arch to support the other set.
Down cellar, also, is grandfather Paul's workshop, which contains some of the tools he manufactured himself. It took him a week, Donna said, to make the lovely wooden fan that is over the front door. In the workshop is the fireplace, still intact, complete with crane for the smaller iron kettles. To the left the brick work continues as a round brick box, which once held a large iron kettle used for heating water.
The Yeaton house was a "raised" building, as evidenced by the corner posts in some of the rooms. It has been left, for the most part, as it was originally built, except that the two small bedrooms off the kitchen have been enlarged, and a connecting link has been built between the house and the woodshed and barn beyond.
The present kitchen has always been the kitchen. It has a long, very high mantel, made from one board, over the brick work that contains the fireplace, now closed off, and the brick oven and the ash pit. The brick oven door, of iron, is decorated with raised leaves arranged around the movable draft, which is shaped like an upside down fan. If you open this door, you can still smell the smoked ham scent which lingers in the brick oven from the days when hams were smoked over a corncob fire.
In a cupboard over the kitchen mantel Donna's father Edwin always kept his shaving materials, and on a Sunday they were taken down for the long and careful process of shaving in preparation for the observance of the Sabbath. Another cupboard, larger but shallower, is placed against the same chimney, but it opens into the entryway that serves the side door of the house. Christian doors, another mark of grandfather Paul's careful workmanship, are found throughout the house.
In the Yeaton house are many lovely and interesting pieces of furniture, much of which belonged to a previous generation. A half-settle came from the Wallace Nutting workship in Framingham, Massachusetts. Made of hard wood, maple perhaps, it has a little catch-all box for a seat, and on the inside cover of the front door is a Nutting creation also.
Mr. Nutting, famous preacher, furniture expert, author, and lecturer, was a lifelong friend of Lillian Powers Yeaton, Donna's mother. As children the two lived in the community of North Manchester, and attended the same church, then known as Scribner Hill Baptist Church. Lillian was brought up by the Virgil Scribners, who lived in the house just south of the church.
There are a few pieces of furniture in the Yeaton house that came from the Scribner home in North Manchester. The three Windsor chairs, for instance. Donna's mother Lillian remembered vividly having to wash those chairs every week. The square piano in Donna's parlor is one that was bought for Lillian in 1874, when she was fourteen years of age. The piano, now 107 years old, is still in good condition. Outside the house, near Donna's garden, is a beautiful smokebush that came from the one still growing on the edge of the old Scribner cellar.
Donna has two vases that came from the Scribner house. One is a majolica-type vase, which is on the mantel above the parlor fireplace. The flaring trumpet part of the vase is a smoky blue, the base a mottled brown. From the base grows a brown-and-blue serpentine vine which bears green leaves and small trumpet-like flowers. The other vase is of Parian marble, urn-shaped, thin, white with handles coming straight out near the throat of the urn. A bunch of grapes is at the base of each handle. There are grape leaves and even delicate tendrils in the clusters.
On the 1879 map of Belgrade from "Atlas of Kennebec County" by Caldwell and Halfpenny, there are eleven houses bearing a Yeaton name. One "L. Yeaton," has a hotel. Yeaton names appear in the list of town officers given in Kingsbury's "History of Kennebec County." The year after Belgrade was incorporated as a town (1796) Paul Yeaton was listed as one of the three selectmen.
This Paul was a Revolutionary soldier, and he came from New Hampshire in 1794, when Belgrade was known as Washington Plantation. He would become Donna Yeaton's great-grandfather, and he lived to be 96, date of death was 1856. According to Kingsbury, in 1816 also known as the year "Eighteen hundred and froze to death," Paul Yeaton was clever enough to raise twelve of only twenty-five bushels of corn which was Belgrade's total corn crop for that cold summer.
The Yeatons first settled on the Dunn Road in Belgrade, then built on the West Road, farther north of the present Yeaton home, the one that Paul, son of the first Paul, built when he was twenty-three years old and unmarried. His brother Andrew and wife Eliza Goodrich Yeaton lived in the house first and Paul stayed with them.
One day, in 1830, Eliza's younger sister, Lydia Ann, age 10, was coming across the fields to visit Eliza and Andrew. Looking ahead, she saw a nice young man standing in the doorway of the house he had built. If, as they say, great events cast their shadow before them, Lydia should have experienced a thrill, because she was looking at her future husband. Paul Yeaton and Lydia Goodridge, despite the difference in their ages, were later married and lived in one part of his house, while his brother and family lived in another part.
A door to the left of the fireplace in the parlor was the one the sisters used as they visited back and forth. When brothers marry sisters, their children are called "double-cousins," so Paul and Lydia's children would be double cousins to Andrew and Eliza's. When, by 1848, the children of the latter couple numbered five, they thought it was time to move.
Across the road was a nice location on a small hill, and here the Yeaton brothers built another house. This is the house which Donna occupied while her brother Paul and his wife lived in the older homestead and brought up their family. After the death of her brother and sister-in-law, Donna moved back into her childhood home.
The Yeaton family have been well-known musicians, playing with instrumental groups and singing in choirs. They would sing among themselves around the old square piano, just for the love of singing. When Wallace Nutting came back to the Scribner Hill Baptist Church to have one of his Old Home Gatherings, as he called them, the Yeaton family always attended, and the name of Paul Yeaton, Donna's brother, appears on one of the program booklets as a member of an instrumental trio which played a prelude to Mr. Nutting's worship service and accompanied the congregational hymn singing.
Donna's father had a wonderful tenor voice and he and her mother Lillian, who was a soprano, often sang duets together. Edwin taught singing school in Belgrade in the days when singing schools were popular. Edwin's first marriage was to Frances Haskell of New Glouster, Maine. Their only daughter, Carolyn, or Carrie as she was called in the Kennebec County History, studied music in Europe and taught and performed in New York City. She married the editor of Scientific American and the Science Editor of the New York Times.
Carrie spent summers on the farm in Belgrade and gave piano lessons to pupils in the town. One of her puplis was Donna, her half sister, twelve years younger. This arrangement necessitated practice periods right at home, under the watchful eye, or ear, of a sister-teacher, and no musical mistakes could be tolerated. Excellent training, certainly, but not appreciated until later in life.
The Yeaton family church is the one at the corner of West Road and Route 135. Grandfather Paul helped build the church in 1826, and it was dedicated in 1928. The Yeatons bought pew number 24, the receipt for payment of which, Donna still has in her possession. Now known as the Old South Church, it used to be called the Rockwood Meeting House. It is a lovely rural church, non-denominational, and is open six months of the year, from May to October. Donna, a nonagenarian now, attends every Sunday.
For those interested in historical details:
For information on Edwin Yeaton, son of the builder, please select here…
For the story of the most recent Yeaton to live in the home, click here to read Donna Yeaton's fascinating 1979 "A Chronicle of Sorts." She was daughter of Edwin, born in 1891…
