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(Photograph by Matthew Aungst)
The house of Congregational pastor George Daman reflects its owner's status in early Woodstock. Arriving from Martha's Vineyard in 1781, Daman established a farm overlooking the Ottauquechee Valley in the western portion of town on the road to Bridgewater. He employed West Woodstock farmer, carpenter, and joiner Joseph Safford to build a substantial, hipped-roof, two-story frame I-house, with a rear kitchen wing, subsequently expanded. Safford, who died in 1798, was highly respected for his role in civic life, notably as a framer of the Vermont constitution and a member of the general assembly, as well as for his skills and taste in building. Daman's commission offered him the opportunity to create a building that showcased those skills. This is most evident in the high-style frontispiece with its modillioned broken pediment and fluted pilasters with entasis that frames a semicircular fanlight with radiating petal-like lights. This doorway, based on English pattern books, has one of the earliest fanlights in Vermont. Constructed just as the motif was making its appearance in the Connecticut River Valley of Connecticut and Massachusetts, the fanlight is an indicator of high-style ambitions that would mark Woodstock throughout its history.