Morris House

Lewis R. Morris, nephew of General Lewis Morris of New York who signed the Declaration of Independence, served as an aide to generals Schuyler and Clinton during the Revolution. He moved to Springfield by 1785, where he established a farm on the banks of the Connecticut River and superintended extensive lands owned by his father, which he inherited by 1790. Morris was a member of the commission that negotiated Vermont's admission to the Union, a clerk for the Vermont legislature, and judge for the Windsor County Court through 1801. At the same time, he began building one of the grandest eighteenth-century houses in Vermont. The Georgian-plan house is wood framed with substantial brick-infill walls and a full brick basement, as well as twin interior chimneys. The house has a low-pitched hipped roof, a modillion cornice at the eaves, and lintel boards with cushion friezes over its windows. Cornice and window friezes are so similar to the nearby and contemporary Rockingham Meeting House (WH7) that it is plausible Morris may have employed some of the same carpenters. Inside, the house has a fourteen-foot-wide central hall with an ornate six-foot-wide staircase, and finely crafted mantels, wainscoting, and built-in interior shutters.

Morris served as a Federalist U.S. representative from 1796 to 1803, and around 1801 married his third wife, Ellen, a daughter of Jonathan Hunt of Vernon (WH61). Ellen, who outlived her husband, bequeathed the farm to her granddaughters, Ellen and Sarah Ballard, in 1847. Leonidas Barry purchased the farm from them in 1875, and he was responsible for the board-and-batten carriage and stock barns at the rear of the house, with their matching central rooftop cupolas. Barry reworked the entrance of the house in the Italianate style and added a full-front piazza, both of which were removed about 1990. At that time, the present entrance frontispiece was added.