Historic Caprilands house moving to NY

Dec. 22—COVENTRY — The once heralded Caprilands Herb Farm farmhouse is being disassembled and transported piece by piece to a new location in Stamfordville, New York, where it will be reconstructed as close as possible to the original home.

"It's being recycled," said David Gengo, owner of Salem Preservation LLC, based in Ridgefield. Salem Preservation has been contracted, along with the Glastonbury Restoration Co., to disassemble the former home of the late Adelma Simmons, the "First Lady of Herbs," who died in 1997 at 93.

"Unfortunately it couldn't stay at its original site," Gengo said Monday at the property that the house has stood on for about 200 years at 534 Silver St. "At least it's being saved."

Gengo said a couple bought the house from the current property owner, David Parent, an investment adviser from Tolland.

Parent could not be reached for comment.

"It's going on 350 acres," Gengo said. "It's going to be a beautiful piece of land with a view of the Catskills. It'll be about two and a half hours from here."

Gengo has been moving houses since the 1980s, he said, breaking down the house piece by piece, cataloguing everything before shipping it to its new location, where it is reassembled.

"We move buildings only as a last resort if they're going to be torn down," he said.

"It's a really nice example of a transitional Federal building," Gengo said, describing the farmhouse. "It has a lot of interesting features that you don't normally see. It was originally built by somebody of means back in ... (the) first quarter of the 19th century."

The process to move a house like this, he said, usually takes about a month and a half to two months, but with the Caprilands farmhouse, he said they have to finish it in under a month.

"We have to get it out of here because there's another building coming in," he said. "It should be gone by the end of December. It's breakneck paced. There's documentation, measurements, you've got to number everything. Doing all that is crazy."

Even though the farmhouse has suffered significant damage, especially to its roof, Gengo said the house overall is still in good condition.

"It's pretty sturdy," he said. "It has some issues. It has some rot. It's a timber-framed building, so it's a pretty solid structure. You can have multiple failures and still stand. Nothing is catastrophic. Everything's fixable."

After Simmons' death, the house and the property turned into an eyesore under the supervision of her husband Edward Cook, who inherited life tenancy of the property.

Following years of legal battles and the property being tied up in probate court, Tolland-Mansfield Probate Court Judge John J. McGrath Jr. terminated Cook's life tenancy in May 2018 and Vernon Superior Court Judge Jennifer Macierowski evicted Cook from the property in December 2018.

The property was turned over to Glastonbury attorney George Purtill, who was administrator of the farm until it was sold in October 2020.

Even though the house will be preserved, there is some vocal disappointment that it is being moved.

Town Manager John Elsesser said he shares others' concerns about the house and property, but in the end, what has happened and is still happening to the property is out of the town's hands.

"We didn't own it," he said.

Elsesser said that Purtill gave the town time to issue a request for proposals for people who would be willing to buy the property with the intent to preserving the herb farm's heritage, but no one bit at the offer.

"We clearly shared their historical concerns," Elsesser said. "We documented the whole building from an historical preservationist. We tried to get somebody to purchase it to run it as another herb farm, no one would do it and the estate sold it."

He said Parent is building a new house on the property and has allowed the time for somebody to remove the old one.

"It will be a loving couple who are really into this," Elsesser said. "They're spending a lot of money on this. It's going to have a new, caring family."

Though the house will no longer be in Coventry and the property is now under new ownership with an unknown future, Land Use Director Eric Trott said the town is working on preserving Simmons' legacy by teaming up with the town historical society.

"It has been a passion of both John (Elsesser) and mine to work through the situation and maintain some presence of what Adelma and Caprilands meant to Coventry and the world," Trott said. "We did everything humanly possible over 10 years. What we could do, we've done and with a great deal of vigilance."

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