St. Lawrence County Historical Society, Part 1

I decided it was time for me to pay another visit to the Silas Wright home and museum in Canton, New York, county seat of St. Lawrence County - but health problems had sapped both my energy and my time. I checked my blog history and discovered that it had been five years since I last posted. So I am reposting from that visit, with minor changes:

The Silas Wright house is on busy Main Street, right next to the Unitarian Church and across the road from the village green. It was built as a two room cottage in 1832 and purchased by the then U.S. Senator and future New York Governor in 1834. The Wrights spent the next ten years enlarging the home in the Greek Revival style to accommodate the Senator's important station in life:

The public entrance was in the rear of the house and, as I walked around back, I could plainly see that the Historical Society had added considerably to the structure in order to accommodate the museum and all their other activities:

The first museum exhibit I visited was a room with such historical artifacts as this cannonball from the French and Indian War in 1760:

And then I entered into the actual Silas Wright house, beginning in the kitchen:

It was a comfortable and homey place, with a full set of dishes:


The cast iron cook stove was a St. Lawrence Stove, manufactured in the tiny hamlet of Brasher Iron Works in the 1850s:

The floor boards were the original boards put down in 1835 and that door to the outside led, in the Wrights' day, to a garden and orchard:

The kitchen, of course, led to the dining room:

A Queen Ann style lowboy which dates back to the late 1700s. By the way, I would have known none of this but for the informative brochure I received when I entered:

Mrs. Wright would have used the fireplace and dutch oven during the couple's first years in the house. The woodwork color was original:

The Empire style sideboard was purchased by the Wright's in Albany in 1840. But I'd only seen two rooms in the Silas Warner House, so I had much more yet to visit. I'll post Part 2 tomorrow: