New Information & New Mysteries as Restoration Continues at the Harriet Beecher Stowe House

The external restoration at the Harriet Beecher Stowe House is continuing through the winter months and will extend into the spring. Below is a detailed update from Chris Buchanan, Restoration Project Coordinator, on the process of investigating the layers of history hidden in the doors and locks at the house. Interested in past blog posts about the restoration? You can find them HERE.

From Chris:
The last time Rob and his guys were at the house, they took all of the original doors that were stored in the basement and brought them back to their shop. I asked them to do some paint stripping in the areas around the locks to uncover evidence of the original locksets, and it’s revealing some very interesting information.

The house retains three early rim locks that are marked “Shawk Patent Cini” on the end of the deadbolt. They were made by Able Shawk, but since I couldn’t find any information listing Shawk as being in business earlier than 1836, I thought there was a good chance that they were not original to the house. This seemed to be confirmed by the fact that we found “Monfort” written on the back side of the Shawk lock on the front door.
 
As it turns out, careful paint stripping revealed that most of the doors have very clear evidence of originally being fitted with Shawk Patent locks – their mechanical workings leave a very distinctive imprint. A deeper internet search produced a newspaper reference to Shawk’s locks in the August 3, 1833 issue of the Richmond (Indiana) Palladium. Other sources confirm that Shawk started making locks sometime in the early 1830s. He appears to have sold the business to Glenn & McGregor in the early 1840s. Able Shawk went on to become a central figure in Cincinnati’s early community of mechanicians.

Large Shaw Lock on Parlor Door

The front door, which was added by the Monforts as part of the 1908 remodeling, has an oversized Shawk lock that was mounted upside down. Very odd. On one of the pair of tall doors that were originally installed between the Parlor and the Dining Room is an exact outline of that front door lock, mounted right side up! My current theory is that the Monforts removed the parlor doors as part of the 1908 remodeling, and stuck them in the basement. They removed the big, antique lock from the door, sent it out to be cleaned and checked over, and then repurposed it on their new front door.

Shaw Lock Front

We’re going to need quite a few of these Shawk locks. Reproducing these is likely to be very expensive, so I hope our members will help me scour the world to find original examples. I can’t find any for sale right now.

Most of the doors appear to have a red mahogany faux graining as there first finish, which would have been very common in nicer homes of the period. One of the doors has graining on one side, but white paint on the other side, suggesting that it may have been an outside door. That door has unique markings from what was probably some type of doorbell, similar to the early example in the photo attached. Our challenge will be to figure out where this door was originally installed. The door’s swing makes it improbable that it was Lyman’s office door, so maybe it was one of the doors opening out to the back porch?
 
These are just a couple of the high points. Lots of other interesting info is coming to light, as well as some new mysteries.

Door with Bell Markings

​Interested in past blog posts about the restoration? Keep reading HERE.

About the author:
Chris Buchanan is the Restoration Project Coordinator for the Ohio History Connection and has overseen the restorations of many historic sites throughout the state of Ohio.