If the Walls Could Talk: Historic Valentine Hill House Still Standing After 375 Years
Valentine
Hill: 1611-1660 (Maternal Ninth Great-Grandfather)
Nathaniel Hill: 1659-1741 (Maternal Eight-Great-Grandfather)
In 1649,
my ancestor, Valentine Hill, built one of the first homes in the Oyster River
area of New Hampshire, an area that is now part of the city of Durham. Although
radically remodelled and added onto over the centuries, the house still
remains. It now serves as a boutique inn, offering 23 rooms, two dining rooms
serving chef-prepared meals, and a tavern. The very age of the building gives the
Hill house significance, but the building also played a part in the history of
New Hampshire and the United States. It truly is a place that matters.
 |
| Placque on the Three Chimneys Inn, Durham NH |
Valentine
Hill was born in England between 1602 and 1611. He arrived in the colonies
around 1635. He established himself as a
merchant in Boston, and according to his entry in The Great Migration, “he
was engaged in the transatlantic trade in fish and timber. He also traded to
the south to Virginia and elsewhere, the commodities being horses, tobacco and
Indian corn. Hill owned fractional shares in vessels, and was a principal
partner in the larges dock and warehouse operation in Boston in the 1640s.”
 |
| Map of Boston in 1600s with Valentine Hill dock property and house highlighted |
Valentine
Hill was admitted to the Boston Puritan church in 1636, and was chosen as a
deacon in 1640. He also became a freeman in 1640. He had two wives. He married
Frances Freestone around 1638. They had five children, but only one survived
past infancy, daughter Hannah. Wife Frances died in 1645. He then married Mary
Eaton in 1648. They had six children, only two of whom survived to adulthood,
daughter Elizabeth and son Nathaniel.
Valentine
Hill had extensive landholdings, which he bought, sold and mortgaged
frequently. In addition to large holdings in the Boston area, he had sixty
acres in the Pullen Point area where he dealt in the fur trade. In 1643, he
received a grant of land at the falls on the Oyster River, and by 1649, he
built a sawmill there. He received additional grants in Oyster River for 500 more
acres, water rights at the falls on the river, and a gristmill.
 |
| Oyster River area in 1600s with Valentine Hill property marked |
Along with
the mills, he built a house in Oyster River. According to the Three Chimneys
Inn website, “This 1649 Homestead, listed on the National Register of Historic
Places, is the oldest house in Durham and one of the oldest buildings in New
Hampshire.”
The inn’s website
goes on to state, “In 1649 Valentine Hill built the original homestead, much of
which was ferried up the Oyster River by gundalo. The house was single story
with a basement and an upstairs living area-kitchen combined. The outdoor
summer kitchen fireplace can be seen in our Tavern…” The property stands on a
rise still known as Valentine Hill, overlooking the river and the falls that
powered the Hill sawmill and gristmill.
 |
| A drawing of a gundalo similar to the vessels that brought construction materials to Oyster River in 1649. |
Grokipedia
noted that the house was “constructed using local timber milled on-site to
support colonial shipbuilding and settlement needs… It employed simple
post-and-beam framing techniques typical of early English colonial architecture
in New England, reflecting First Period vernacular design with functional
elements suited to frontier life.”
Following Valentine
Hill’s death in late 1660, his son Nathaniel, my eight-great-grandfather, eventually
inherited the Oyster River property. The estate was complicated and involved
considerable debt that needed to be settled. Nathaniel’s mother was, for a
time, so destitute that the town paid for her and Nathaniel’s care. Nathaniel was
only one year old at the time of Valentine’s death.
Probate
was still not completely settled by 1699, when a now middle-aged Nathaniel filed
paperwork as the estate’s administrator. The Great Migration (citation below) included
the following record:
“On 4 July
1699, ‘Nathaniell Hill administrator to…Valentine Hill’ presented an inventory,
taken 30 June 1699, of ‘a parcel of land formerly granted unto Mr. Valentine
Hill deceased by the town of Dover…which land is lying & being at the head of
Oyster River…containing about 500 acres as also a parcel of meadow at
Wheelwright’s Pond both…worth forty-five pounds’ [NHPPR 7:390]. On 7 June 1721,
an additional inventory was taken totalling 75 pounds: ‘one hundred acres of
land at Whelrit’s Pond’, 50 pounds, and ‘twenty acres of land at Jonson’s Cross’
25 pounds [NHPPR 7:392].”
Despite
the endless probate issues, it appears that Nathaniel was living in the house. The
Oyster River area suffered an attack from Native Americans during King Philip’s
War in 1694. While many buildings in the community were burned in the attack,
the Hill house survived, and was referred to in records as the Hill Garrison
where other settlers took shelter. In 1699 Nathaniel fitted the house “with
‘Indian Shutters’ for protection.” (Three Chimneys website)
 |
| View of the rear ell of the house--the original section built by Valentine Hill in 1649. Wikimedia Commons, Photo by AcrossTheAtlantic. |
Grokipedia
states, “Around 1699,
Nathaniel Hill, son of the original builder Valentine Hill, expanded the
structure by adding a two-story front section to the existing 1649 rear ell,
transforming it from a modest garrison-style home into a more substantial
residence to accommodate growing family needs. This addition created the
central hall plan and front entrance that define the house's Georgian
appearance today, including features like corner pilasters and 12/12 sash
windows.” Three Chimneys Inn notes that this addition “now forms the front
entrance to the "Maples" and "Coppers" dining rooms.”
 |
| The Three Chimneys Inn several years ago--this two-story front addition was added by Nathaniel Hill. Photo by AcrossTheAtlantic, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons |
Nathaniel
Hill died in 1741, and the house passed to his son Valentine Hill, who died in
1765. At some point the property was transferred to the Woodman family, who
were apparently connected to the Hills through marriage. I have not yet traced
the connection. The Woodmans were probably the owners during the Revolutionary
War, when local history claims the house was “a storage place for munitions that were taken from the
British Blockhouses in Portsmouth and hidden for use by Revolutionary troops.”
(Three Chimneys website).
Around
1795, The Woodmans built a large barn on the property, along with a brick water
cistern. The family also deeded land for a cemetery to the town of Durham. The
cemetery property is adjacent to the Hill house property.
The
Woodmans eventually sold the house and land to George Ffrost. The Ffrosts renovated
the house, adding Federal-style trim and changing the slope of the roof. They
eventually turned the property into an estate with formal gardens and stone
perimeter walls.
 |
| The house while owned by the Ffrosts |
The Ffrosts began renting the house out in the 20th century. One of the tenants was the University of New Hampshire, which used the property as student housing for a brief period. The property became very run down, and might have been razed without the intervention of preservationists.
 |
| Property's condition when the Inn's owners acquired it. |
The Hill-Woodman-Ffrost House was restored, repaired and converted into an inn in 1997. The house is also part of the Durham Historical District.
 |
| Durham Historic District with Hill house/Inn property highlighted, which surrounds cemetery land donated by Woodmans. |
I am so
glad this special home still survives, thanks to the hard work and financial
investment of the Inn’s owners. I hope to someday visit the Inn and stay in one
of the rooms that Nathaniel Hill added to the house over 325 years ago. I would
love to walk in the footsteps of my eighth and ninth great-grandfathers.
Sources:
“Valentine
Hill.” The Great Migration and the Great Migration Begins, 1620-1635.
Vol. 3, G-H. Anderson, Robert Charles. Boston:
New England Historical and Genealogical Society, 1996-2011.
Buildings
of New England.
“Valentine Hill House. C. 1649.” https://buildingsofnewengland.com/2021/09/07/valentine-hill-house-c-1649/
“Steeped
in New Hampshire History.” Three Chimneys Inn website, History page. https://www.threechimneysinn.com/history
https://winthropmemorials.org/great-allotment/pages/valentine-hill.html
AcrossTheAtlantic,
CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via
Wikimedia Commons
By
AcrossTheAtlantic - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=63031226
Hill-Woodman-Ffrost
House. https://grokipedia.com/page/hill_woodman_ffrost_house
New Hampshire,
U.S., Wills and Probate Records, 1643-1932. Will of Nathaniel Hill. https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/8996/images/007636323_00541?_gl=1*s94pvf*_up*MQ..*_gs*MQ..&gclid=CjwKCAjwvsvTBhBaEiwAmf-3ngqoQibXX0ck4iVzu2PGov9Xp65ZyG1hYkBtvKomoXUGKLSE6_JY_RoCWw8QAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds&gbraid=0AAAAADtC4Oejd84GGFLEPSklEYDUF4bax&pId=119209
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