Justin Morrill Homestead

 On a beautiful Sunday in May, Dan and I drove west to Strafford, Vermont to visit the Justin Morrill Homestead.  Their website said they would be open for tours of the house on the hour beginning at 10 am.  We arrived shortly after noon expecting to be too late for the noon tour but still hopeful that they may have started late.  Well there was no noon tour and no expectation for any tour because the folks that were there were only volunteers working on the garden. And their understanding was that there was no one  available at all to do tours that day.  They said we could walk the grounds which we did.

Justin Morrill was not a name familiar to us until we read about this estate and passed it by the several times we were in Strafford. The estate was hit hard by the flooding in Vermont last summer and had just reopened after repairs.

Morrill went on to serve in the Senate and the combined years of being a Congressman and Senator resulted in a length of service record of 43 years and 299 days that was the longest in US history at the time of his death. 

Here are the photos of our walk around.

Renovated barn is now an education center.

View of house from the back. The flat roof addition on the left is the library.

Someone labeled this but we wondered how such a short length could have been such a court.

Side of house with library on the right.

Library

This entry ramp is one flat stone.

Gardens with barns in background

Roofline and the number of chimneys struck me in this photo.

Some of the many barns each with a separate purpose.

The ice pond was up the hill beyond the barns. 

Another rock slab for a bridge

The stream Dan was crossing above had this grist stone in it.

Here looking down stream.

And here on the other side.

Not sure why my photos make the house look askew.

Some members of the garden crew took pity on us as we prepared to leave and told us what they knew of the house.  They showed us the painted screens in the windows there where we were standing.  Photos of them were impossible.

Mrs. Morrill's bedroom was above the bay window of the dining room and apparently it's done all in pink.  They said she was responsible for color of the house.

One day we'll return for the inside tour.