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(Photograph by Curtis B. Johnson, C. B. Johnson Photography)
The house built by James Fitch, a major in the Westminster militia when he purchased this site in 1779, is one of the earliest remaining Georgian exteriors in Vermont. It was likely a decade or more before this house was finished, if its sophisticated form and styling are any indication. It is a wood-frame house with exterior end girts visible at the gable ends, an older framing technique common in southern New England that supports an early date. Its central-hall plan with two interior, rear-wall chimneys is unusual. The staggered, beveled quoins at the corners and around the entrance, the tapered fluted entrance pilasters, and the mutule-enriched cornice are similar to other remaining Georgian exteriors from the 1780s. Fitch ran a tannery on the brook to the south, and in 1809, he built the Federal house across the road for his son. In 1880 Putney Hannum established a prosperous farm here, and his son Fred added a two-story rear ell and the Colonial Revival front porch that now shelters the first floor.