The Fenno House is the oldest dwelling in the Village and depicts a way of life that in the 1830s would have been well behind the times. Presented as the home of an elderly widow and her unmarried daughter, most of its furnishings date back to the years before 1800, and some even to the years before the Revolution. The house retains its traditional early 18th-century form, with kitchen and parlor below, and bedchambers above. The chamber over the kitchen is sparsely furnished for the family’s boarder, a young man just starting out in life away from home—a journeyman, clerk, or teacher.

Women, in a society in which many were widowed early and some remained unmarried, often needed to find ways to make a living on their own. Some joined the households of kinfolk and contributed their domestic skills. But even those who sought greater independence found their opportunities in the familiar skills of textiles, needlework, and managing a household. The Fenno House shows that the widow and her daughter do some spinning and weaving, occasionally house a boarder, and rent out fields and pasture to earn a respectable, though none too generous, income. With a large fenced vegetable garden out back and a few animals in the barnyard, the household also has an ongoing involvement in small-scale farming.

By the early 19th century, machine-woven cloth from Britain and from the region’s growing textile factories was eliminating most of the demand for traditional handspun and handwoven products. But some spinning wheels were still in use, twisting wool into yarn for knitting stockings, gloves, and other accessories. And a number of handloom weavers continued to find custom work making blankets, coverlets, and cloth for customers in their communities. The Fenno House looms reproduce textiles, from examples in the museum’s collection or from early weavers’ drafts, which are displayed and used in the historic village.