The Rural We: Pamela Herrick
Have you ever wondered about the history of your house, who lived there before you, what it looked like then and how it changed through the years? Then you need to call on the services of Pamela Herrick, house historian. Herrick, a 12th generation Mainer who lives in Red Hook, researches and writes house histories for property owners in the Hudson Valley. Trained as a museum curator, she has an M.A. from the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture (the study of American decorative arts), and is past director of Washington Irving’s Sunnyside and Van Cortlandt House Museum. In 2019 she started her business, A Houseful, which provides curious homeowners with a hardcover, illustrated narrative history of their house, along with a regional and national history timeline. Herrick is now also writing historical fiction based on her research about an island community off the Penobscot Bay in Maine. “There’s no end of stories to be told,” she says.
After graduate school, I was director at Sunnyside, Washington Irving’s house. I fell in love with the Hudson Valley and decided I needed to live near the river, but that wasn’t far enough north. So I came to Red Hook in the mid 90s and worked as a consultant to history museums and historic sites. One of the most interesting was the Vanderbilt Mansion, where I researched life on the estate, reconstructing what it felt like to live and work on the property.
What A Houseful does is offer people in the Hudson Valley better insight as to who lived in their house before them. It helps them make a connection to its history. My work involves a lot of historical research, digging into archives, church and census records, old newspapers. I find previous homeowners who might have photos of the exterior and interior of the house. We often know who the first owners were, but I’m just as interested in the occupants from the 19th and 20th century. I start to create a complex and interesting history through the window of the house that tells us a lot about the history of the Hudson Valley.
An example is the house I’m working on now — a circa 1810 Palatine house in Germantown. It’s already been nominated for the historic register and there is a short list of owners already identified in that nomination. I’m looking for descendants of that house to find things that haven’t turned up in the historical register research.
I begin a house history by developing a constellation of names that have to do with a house throughout its history. I look for connectors, or people who connected with that family. I pursue leads through tax, court, and probate records. It’s a lot of dusty archives work, and I love it.
People who buy old houses inherently have an interest in the past. They wonder who lived in the rooms before them. Who made these alterations? The house asks you questions, and to work with someone who can get you some of those answers is satisfying. Often my clients are very creative people, and there’s frequently a connection between the current and former residents — connecting themes or stories between current and past owners.
I provide my clients with a hardcover keepsake, a very readable narrative history of the house with a timeline we can identify, along with regional and national history. It’s all fully documented and footnoted. A copy goes to the homeowners and I donate a copy to the regional historical society.
Through this research we find how much we have in common with the first homeowners. And it’s not just for houses that are centuries old. Anything before 1950 is worthy of research.
Pamela Herrick investigating behind the old stove in her c.1890 house on an island off the coast of Maine.
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