Red House: Being a Mostly Accurate Account of New England's Oldest Continuously Lived-in House

by Sarah Messer

In her critically acclaimed, ingenious memoir, Sarah Messer explores America’s fascination with history, family, and Great Houses. Her Massachusetts childhood home had sheltered the Hatch family for 325 years when her parents bought it in 1965. The will of the house’s original owner, Walter Hatch—which stipulated Red House was to be passed down, "never to be sold or mortgaged from my children and grandchildren forever"—still hung in the living room. In Red House, Messer explores the strange and enriching consequences of growing up with another family’s birthright. Answering the riddle of when shelter becomes first a home and then an identity, Messer has created a classic exploration of heritage, community, and the role architecture plays in our national identity.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Memoir, Architecture, Historical, Biography, Biography Memoir

388 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2004

Reviews

[Diane · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a mixed bag for me. It's half-memoir, half-history, and I much preferred the memoir part.

Sarah Messer grew up in a centuries-old "red house" in Marshfield, Massachusetts. Her father bought the home in 1965 from a descendant of the original owner, Walter Hatch, who reportedly built the house in 1647. The house was given a patchwork of renovations over the years, and parts of it were in danger of falling down.

Hatch's will stipulated that the house should never leave the family, but for various reasons, Messer's father was able to buy the home, despite not being a relation. Messer alternates the chapters between her experiences of living in the house and the home's history, which she pieces together through documents.

The colonial history was a bit dry and required a fair amount of skimming to get through. By coincidence, I had recently read another book about Americana, Jill Lepore's "Book of Ages," which handled the history aspect more gracefully than "Red House."

My favorite parts of the book were Messer's memories in the old house and how she and her siblings made efforts to repair and renovate it. There were also some great stories about ghosts who haunted the house, and how Messer herself talked to one of them in her sleep one night. Chilling!

I picked up this book after reading an interview with the author Elizabeth McCracken, who said this is one of her favorite books. While "Red House" won't be a favorite, I did enjoy it and would recommend it to anyone who likes reading about the history of old buildings.

[Diane Barnes · Rating 4 out of 5]

I started this book thinking that I would give it a chance, but would abandon it quickly if it bored me. I read the first 50 pages one night, and decided to keep going. Then another 100 effortless pages and I realized this was a keeper. And when I read the last page today, I wanted more. So much for unwarranted snap judgements.

It's the story of a house, which is actually the main character; the history of the Hatch family of Marshfield, Massachusetts, who built the house in 1647, and their descendants; and a memoir of the Messer family who bought the house in 1965 and raised their 8 children there. The author was one of those children. She has a very understated style of writing which suited this book perfectly. She left out a lot of things I wanted to know, but that only whetted my appetite and kept me reading. In short, it was a perfect book for the week of Thanksgiving, when I wanted something good, but not a novel in which I had to worry about an emotional investment.

[Sonya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of the reviewers found this book a bit slow, lacking a plot and exciting twists. However, I found it interesting. Having grown up in Massachusetts most likely helped (and overlooking the author's style of writing which could be obvious in several places but seemed to work in others). I am familiar with many of the towns, places, and buildings the author mentioned. I found the family histories, both current and past, laid out well in an alternating pattern - going from history to current times in every other chapter. It shows how the past and the present are intertwined in an old house such as this one. I also couldn't help but take sides with one family over the other as she explains how the house was sold out of the family after over 300 years. I would recommend it for anyone interested in home restoration, early New England settlement, and Massachusetts history.

[Julie H. Ernstein · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a really marvelous book--written very much in the spirit of the "experimental narrative" forms with which many social scientists have approached their subjects in recent years. Where it departs from that tradition, however, is in the fact that the author grew up in the Red House and is not herself a historian, anthropologist, archaeologist, or preservationist. Thus, her connection to the site is first-person, loaded, potentially biased and most definitely circumscribed by the details controlled by her parents and the assorted limitations that direct access to information conveys.

Each chapter of the book is structured similarly--that is, each begins with a historic vignette, account or some other detail about the house's past and then transports the reader to the present. In this respect, it very much calls to mind the Prices' First Time with its alteration between historic text and details on the upper half of each page and the material world of objects on the lower half of each page. The book deals with a number of themes, including truth, permanency, ownership of the past, whose story/version of the past gets told, and significance as relates to small vs. big stories, and abandonment. Also of note, Messer is keenly aware that writing about the past as relates to this mid-17th century house has implications for social and family relations in the present.

Messer is a solid storyteller, and the Red House is a great vehicle for conveying several parallel stories. Anyone who enjoys old houses, family histories, and the vicissitudes of interpreting the whole on the basis of the equivalent of partial x-rays will thoroughly enjoy Red House....

[Sarah Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

"'It's about growing up with someone else's history,' I said. 'It's the story of the house.' [...] 'There were daguerreotypes of your great-grandfather on the fireplace mantels,' I said, looking at Josh, 'not our'" (314).

In 1965, seemingly on a whim, and because he fell in love with the house, Ronald Messer changed his plans to move to California in favor of buying a ramshackle house near Boston. For uncertain reasons, Robert Warren Hatch had decided to sell Red House, which had been in his family for eight generations. Red House was built in 1647 by Robert Warren Hatch's great-great-great-great-great-grandfather Walter Hatch, and was one of the earliest houses built in the area.

Walter Hatch was born in England in 1623 and immigrated to Scituate in New England in 1634 with his parents and five siblings. At the age of 24, in 1647, he bought some land in Two Mile and began building a house. Over time, and as the house was passed down to subsequent generations, it was updated. Rooms were added. Fires burned down sections that were rebuilt. Outbuildings appeared and disappeared around its perimeter over the years. But the central Red House remained when Dr. Messer bought it in 1965. Along with four children from his first marriage, his four younger children, including daughter and author Sarah, would grow up in Red House. It was cold, it was ramshackle, it lacked modern conveniences, and most of all it was filled with another family's history. In this world, Sarah and her sisters grew up.

This book is told in alternating sections of the history of the Hatch family and the house, and memoir of Sarah's memories of the house. As the book progresses, the sections collapse closer together, with Sarah's chapters increasing including history when she moves back to Red House as an adult and begins efforts to restore it along with one of her older sisters. I expected to enjoy the historical sections most of all, but I truly enjoyed the more lyrically written memoir sections. This may also be due to the relatively sparse historical details shared - although the ones shared were captivating. Like the transition from Israel Hatch III who would have worn pantaloons and tied his hair at the nape and his son Joel, who would've learned proper grammar and pronunciation at school. Whereas his father said "pint of the knife" and "spile," his son in the next generation said "point of the knife" and "spoil" (137). And the revelation that a previous resident had painted the walls inside in a leopard pattern, and the fact that the house was red because it was the cheapest paint at the time. I also was intrigued by Sarah's descriptions of supernatural experiences within the Red House.

I was frustrated by Messer's difficulty in getting the facts straight from her father over the purchase of the house and his eventual fallout with the last Hatch owner. I was also frustrated by her father's refusal to allow the house to be X-rayed to determine its historical origins. Additionally, I would have loved a more comprehensive history of the Hatch family and each generation of owners. However, overall this was a fascinating history - of historical houses, of the evolution of home over time, on the history of domestic life in America, over the nebulous boundary between your family's history and another's. I'm glad the Red House still stands and is currently preserved for future occupants, but I'm just as glad its history has been documented and shared with readers.

[Lesley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another quirky, interesting book/memoir. If I was making a mini-collection of these, this one would go with Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight and Dogtown -- I'm sure there are others that I'm just not thinking of right now. This is the kind of book that I love discovering in the library stacks and why I would never want to be without the eclectic selection at the library (vs. the mainstream/most popular selection at chain bookstores).

[Kirsten · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a curious book and kind of a mixed bag. I mostly liked the historical parts better than the contemporary bits, but sometimes the more modern parts got really interesting and compelling. As always, there should have more maps and more pictures.

[Dolly · Rating 3 out of 5]

I remember that I was in Seoul, Korea about two years ago, at the base library, when one of my fellow exercise participants (I forget who, sorry!) recommended this book to me. I suppose that's typical for me. I remembered the book, but not the person. ...sigh...

In any case, the simple title of the book stuck with me and I added it to my to-read list. It's a sad fact that even though I diligently put books from my to-read list into my on-hold list at the library, the to-read list seems to just grow and grow and grow. I've pretty much accepted the fact that I'll never be able to whittle it down to nothing, but I still try. There are just so many interesting books out there I want to read someday!

So anyway...back to the book. This is a very interesting account of both the long and detailed history of a house in Massachusetts and of the families who lived in it. While it is a work of non-fiction, it is a melange of history, anedotes, personal recollections and somewhat of a journal of the process of compiling all of this information together. The memories may be flawed, but the feelings are laid bare for all to see. As a Massachusetts native myself, I was fascinated by the historical references and the descriptions of the area. Also, the references to the children's books written by Richard Warren Hatch intrigue me. I would love to read a copy of "The Curious Lobster" and/or "The Curious Lobster's Island."

My sister-in-law once lived in "the second oldest house" in her town and I was always interested to see the old architectural details that melded with the new and how the house evolved over time. It wasn't always pretty, but the house truly had a character all of its own. I can imagine that the "Red House" is much the same.

interesting quote:
"Don't let any restorer lead you to forget that the object is not to recreate a mid-17th century house - a museum," he wrote early on. "A house grows and changes. Restorers are too often obsessed with what they conceive to be the 'original' - but no family continued living in an 'original' unless they were bankrupt - which the Hatch land-owners and mill-owners certainly were not." (p. 36)

new words: gundalow, sumptuary, treacle, glisters, sublunary, dory, peregrination, peripatetic

[Melinda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed the swap back and forth between the author's history in the house and the stories of the people who used to live there. The house is definitely a character. The way it was described helped me understand what life was like in the house from the late 17th century through the 1980s. Fascinating narrative that creatively mixes historical record with the history made as the author lived it.

[Kristin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Messer brings a poet's voice to this nonfiction work about her childhood home, the Red House. Tying in themes of birthright, purchasing power, architecture, and above all, family, she manages to create an interesting, if not profoundly moving, piece.

[Karen]

Every house no matter how grand or humble has a story to tell. I enjoy books written by people who listen to old homes and take the time to tell the stories.

[Shawna · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you love houses and family history/historical objects you will enjoy this book!

[MF Barry · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book could have been so much better than it was - which is the truly disappointing thing.

The book tells the story of a house in southern Massachusetts that has been lived in (almost exclusively) by the same family from 1646 through the mid 1960's when a new, unrelated family, buys the house and lives there. The story is told in alternating chapters based on the historical knowledge for each generation of the original family then from the perspective of the current owners.

What went wrong is that neither perspective is well told. Knowing that there are limited records from the mid 1600's, the reader is not drawn to what happened at that time but there are long descriptions of the land and the house. My imagination couldn't really pull together what the area looked like in 1646 and how that changed in the subsequent eras. The perspective of the current residents was spotty and uneven. There is a paragraph near the end of the book, where the author (who grew up in the house as the 'current family') relays a conversation with an old boyfriend and goes into detail on what was on his tuna sandwich! I really didn't understand why the conversation (and subsequent actions) were even included never mind the tuna sandwich.

What does come across is how difficult it is to have a family house passed through the decades - the allure of history but the potential resentment that you could never create your own history but continue to live the history of your extended family. For the current family that lives there, they are living in a house with someone else history - the history they are making in their day-to-day live getting overshadowed by the history of the house and the generations of people that lived there previously.

I wanted to like this book but there is a lot that was wrong with it and not enough that drew me in. If this wasn't a book club book, I don't think I would have finished it.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

I came across this book reading an article about, I've forgotten exactly where now, and it mentioned the my old hometown of Marshfield, Massachusetts. It is a relatively small but popular town that is now known for it's sightings of resident Steve Tyler of Aerosmith. It also caught my interest because I while living there I too was living in an old red farm house that was my grandparents. Obviously not the same house and it was on the other side of town. The author was also there around the same time but I never knew her personally as she was a grade ahead of me. It gave me a little more understanding of references to the region and town. It is located on what is known locally as the South Shore midway between the well known Boston and the historic Plymouth. If you think of it one could hardly escape American history between these well known locations of early American history. Many of our school field trips were either to Boston or Plymouth historic sites.

The book has a mixture of three story lines. First, in not in any particular order, is a personal memoir that covers the authors childhood to adulthood. Thru house fires, drug addiction, renovating the house and efforts writing the book itself. Secondly is the local geographic history of the immediate area. Third was the family history of the Hatch's,the original family that owned it, from colonial times to the present day(as of the books writing).

I did learn some interesting local history along the way that I didn't know before. It was when I was a kid living in this town and learning of local history that sparked a lifetime interest in history itself.

The book comes back to original family as the author reconnects to the original family that owned the house(child of owner who sold the house but had already passed away) which makes for a warm closure to the story.

[Keith Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

So many things to admire about this book. First there is the story. An old house, mostly inhabited by one family until the Messer family moves in. A house intimately tied to the early history of America. And then the story of the Messer family, understood mostly through their relationship to the house. We get hints of this large family, of the dynamics there, but just hints. The house covers everything else.

Messer found a form, breaking between history and her family until near the end they mingle and combine. It makes a movement that feels inevitable. Fated.

It also is a significant addition to the literature of place, although place here is not the natural environment and our relationship with it (although that's certainly a part of it, it is a small part, barely touched on). No, here the place is a house, not even the town the house is in. The building. And what the building gives us and what it demands of us. I think that's important.

Messer's prose is clean but evocative. She loves her lists (like all poets do), and I, for one, loved losing myself in those lists of old tools and long dead people. The lists create the absolutely winning sense of authenticity that is the strong core of this book.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

A copy of this book had been lying around my house for three years. I kept looking at it and then putting it down. Finally, I took the plunge, mostly due to not having anything else to read. The book was a pleasant surprise, part memoir and part a casual history of her family's historic homestead in Marshfield, Massachusetts. I read through the book quickly as I was intrigued by the author's unconventional family and by the Hatch family who had built the house and lived there for more than three centuries. There were times in the middle of the memoir part of the book that dragged a little for me. I actually found the history of the Hatch family quite interesting, particularly when the author gave details about daily life. The best writing here is the author's musing about what houses and places mean to us, and whether the concept of historical authenticity matters, or rather, adapting and morphing over the ages is what inevitably happens.

[Lauriann · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was drawn to this book for two reasons - "New England" and "old house." Perfect combination. This is the non-fiction telling of a 1600's house that was passed down from generation to generation in the same family until it was purchased in the mid-twentieth century by the author's parents. With the house came valuable documents and artifacts, centuries old. One could not live there without feeling the presence, the stories of the large and extended original owners, the Hatch family. The telling took us through the reconstruction of the house after a fire nearly destroyed it, and a more recent reconstruction designed to preserve it and keep it from falling apart. Having grown up in a house built in the 1700's, the descriptions resonated - especially when the author described the dirt floor cellar, and foundation of stone/boulders. I've never read a book quite like this one and I enjoyed my literary trip into a most fascinating house history.

[Fay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Many events in a busy phase of my life made the reading of this book take longer than it should have. I love old structures.. houses, barns, churches... so enjoyed this biography of an old house. Originally, it was thought to be built in 1646. Conflicting evidence suggests it got a later start, but by any evidence, it is an old house. For 300 years it belonged to the Hatch family in Marshfied, MA. Sarah Messer's father bought it in the 20th century and ended the Hatch family possession. Thankfully, Sarah had access to several of the Hatch family members to gain information concerning the house over the years. The house became the basis of her Master's thesis, and informed this book.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars. A delightfully bizarre memoir containing a multitude of historical errors & fallacies, yet somehow I loved it anyway.

The author is at times eminently quotable, such as this spot-on observation of the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, MA - “Curved balconies on the second floor overlooked the reading room, creating a panoptic effect, a friendly police-state of heritage...” (pg. 276) One needn’t be a historian to find the humor in that bit, along with her many assorted insights.

[Andrea · Rating 3 out of 5]

A really interesting book! The "Red House" is in a town local to where I live. It was really interesting to read about the history of not only the house, but also the original settlers and general area. I found the information about the families made the book more interesting then a typical history read.

[Jennifer Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Took me a while to get through this. It was very much written in the non-fiction, textbookish style so I think that is why I could only read it in fits and starts. I did like the story and the history of the crazy Hatch family. It was interesting how similar the Messer family was to them. Must have been kismet that they bought the house.

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

At several points in this book, I devoured 10, 20, 30 pages…the stories were captivating. I enjoyed the alternating chapters of personal narrative and another family’s history. It kept things interesting and kept me engaged. If you like family history, stories of house and home, it’s one to read.

[Mary Beth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Liked the New England History. Gave the reader insight into the Marshfield area. Good social history about the early settlers through the generations.

[Klyon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Revealing read.

[Margo · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thoroughly enjoyable trip back through the history of the hatch family of Marshfield MA, as seen though the oldest continuously inhabited house in New England. (or probably, anyway).

[Joyce Donohue · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gripping.

I will never forget this book. Like Tracey Kidder's HOUSE, Messer's account will frequent my thoughts. It's a keeper, for sure.

[Aprillivermoreyahoo.com · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great read for those of us who love history.

[Pam Schwartz · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just couldn't get into it.

[Rachel Harper · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a beautiful book.

[Natalie · Rating 4 out of 5]

As someone related to the man that built the house I very much enjoyed this read.