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

What would it be like to grow up in a home suffused with three hundred years of another family’s history? When Sarah Messer’s parents impulsively purchased Red House from Richard Warren Hatch, the great-great-great-great-great grandson of the original owner, Walter Hatch, they acquired much more than a lovingly preserved colonial home. The house contained Hatch family journals, letters, and daguerreotypes, and Walter Hatch’s last will and testament, which stated that the house was to be passed down “forever from generation to generation to the world’s end never to be sold or mortgaged from my children and grandchildren forever.”

With a poet’s eye for clever detail and an ear for the rhythm of place and language, Red Houseis a real work of living history, a story of America from its wild beginnings in colonial New England through nine generations of the Hatch family. Based on an award-winning article Messer wrote for Yankee Magazineabout Red House, this is a book for those of us who love old houses, colonial history, and beautifully written family stories.