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(Photograph by Curtis B. Johnson, C. B. Johnson Photography) -
(Photograph by Curtis B. Johnson, C. B. Johnson Photography)
Farmer and breeder Jonathan Willmarth constructed this early example of a Gothic Revival farm “cottage.” It is a good representative of the more than two dozen examples built in the mid-nineteenth century in western Addison County and one of the few that is largely unaltered. Essentially a Classic Cottage plan with an ell, it is distinguished by the twin, steeply pitched wall dormers, geometric foliate bargeboard trimming the gables, and a canted, corner-entrance front porch with the slatted and pierced porch supports characteristic of west-county Gothic Revival.
Grandson of an eighteenth-century settler, Willmarth established his place in a family neighborhood of five adjacent farms. The families prospered in the county's Merino sheep boom of 1824–1848, and Willmarth became a successful stock breeder. In 1876 he was a founding member of the Vermont Merino Sheep Breeders Association and was also known for breeding short-horned cattle and Yorkshire hogs. A bargeboard-trimmed shop and two barns behind the farmhouse are from this period, and an early-twentieth-century gambrel-roofed dairy barn now dominates the farmyard.