Sweet Farm

Local records state that carpenter and stone-mason George Megers built this Cape-type house for Thaddeus Chase. With one-and-a-half stories, the house is constructed of uncoursed fieldstone with a high knee wall. Megers served with a Hessian force at Ticonderoga, but deserted in 1777, and is said to have fought with the Colonials at the Battle of Bennington. He ended up in Fairfax in 1800 and is credited with most of the dozen or so stone Cape-type dwellings in the Fairfax and Cambridge area. Given his birth date in 1742, this house likely was among Megers's final commissions or else an indication that the local masonry tradition he helped establish was passed to the next generation of builders. This might have included his workmen, who were responsible for some of the dwellings in the area that appear to date from the 1830s. This prime farm on the north bank of the Lamoille River changed hands several times during the nineteenth century, and was acquired by the Sweet family in 1911. They added the gambrel-roofed ground-stable dairy barn on the south side of the road in 1927 and operate a dairy farm here.