C-1-5
This modest 20 x 28’ cellar hole was probably the home of Ebenezer Perry. Perry’s tenure here was short. He bought land here in May 1777 though he may have begun improving the place before then. It is difficult to imagine a man with a wife and six small children living in Wilton, building a home for them all in a matter of a few months, but it wasn’t likely built by the previous landowner. He lived in a home he had built about 1771 across the town line in Dublin. Ebenezer moved here with his second wife Dorcas (Whitman) and children aged 11, 9, 8, 5, 3 and young Ebenezer born in Wilton October 4, 1776. Their oldest, Ichabod, was not with them having enlisted “for the war” in March 1777 at age sixteen.
Whenever Ebenezer built the house, he was not here long before joining the fight at the Battle of Bennington where the thirty-five-year-old father of seven was killed in an August 16th skirmish that preceded the battle itself. Nelson historian, Simon Goodell Griffin writes that while Ebenezer was away six of their children caught dysentery and died. A number of Nelson children died that summer. Genealogical evidence available today suggests the number was five, but it was a huge tragedy for Dorcas and her two remaining children, stepson, Ichabod, and namesake, Dorcas, aged three. Struthers reports that the house itself burned. There is no record of a subsequent inhabitant.
Mother and daughter probably returned to family and friends in Wilton. The sale of the property to Nathaniel Breed was finalized in 1782.
