Imagining Ichabod: My Journey into 18th-Century America through History, Food, and a Georgian House

Paula Bennett
Photographs by Sandy Agrafiotis

A warm, personal account of author Paul Bennett’s life in a historic house in Berwick, Maine, that encompasses the history of the property, taking the reader back to the early years of the American republic. Bennett describes decorating the historic house she purchased with her husband, Harvey, with period furnishings and artifacts, as she researches the original owners and their decedents, a series of Ichabods whose lives intertwined with some notable episodes of America’s early history. This charming book also includes 25 adapted historic recipes.

Press and Awards


July 2016
Hardcover with dust jacket
250 pages
60 color illustrations
7.25 x 9.75 inches

ISBN: 978-0983863243

$29.95

Description

Prompted by a serendipitous visit to a bookstore, an epiphany leads Paula Bennett and her husband, Harvey, to southern Maine where they both fall in love with the General Ichabod Goodwin House—affectionately called Old Fields. Built at the end of the 18th century, the historic house still has its original nine-over-six windows, early Georgian moldings, and wide-plank painted wood floors. But it is the keeping room with its eight-foot wide, five-foot high hearth that captures their imaginations.

The author undertakes the challenge of furnishing the eight rooms in the original part of the house. Trying to evoke an 18th-century atmosphere, Paula and Harvey visit historic house museums and begin to build a library on early American décor. Most helpful are two inventories the author found in the collection of Goodwin family papers at Dartmouth—–those of the first two Goodwins to head Old Fields, a father and son, both named Ichabod. As work on furnishing the house progresses, Paula researches the lives of the original owners, who lived there more than 250 years ago, and explores historic recipes that she and her husband recreate in their hearth. Woven throughout the text, are recipes that the author shares with her readers who share her passion for the culinary arts. Alongside the history and historic cooking, Bennett recounts the progress of an archaeological dig outside their front door. Based on the myriad items unearthed since 2011, many details about the chronology of the property and the house have come to light.

This book is for anyone who has a passion for historic homes, archaeology, early American history, and historic cooking. Those armchair adventurers will delight in Paula and Harvey Bennett’s journey as they “cultivate a slower, less technology-based existence, cherry-picking from the past.”

Advance Praise

“From Georgian architecture and stoneware tankards to recreating eighteenth-century feasts, Imagining Ichabod is an enjoyable and delicious exploration of early American life.”
Emerson W. Baker, Salem State University, author of A Storm of Witchcraft: The Salem Trials and the American Experience


“This is not your typical tale of an unsuspecting couple possessed by the ghosts of an ancient New England home. Paula and Harvey Bennett are obsessed, to be sure, by their historic Maine house—but in the best ways possible. This intimate memoir chronicles their painstaking, yet joyous, efforts to eat, drink, and be historically accurate as they rediscover the spirits that live among them.”
J. Dennis Robinson, author of Mystery on the Isles of Shoals

“You will be transported back in time by Paula’s engaging narrative. The journey to discover the house’s history, bolstered by the food and descriptions of daily life, is such a joy to read. I want to be a guest at the feast!”
Patricia Laska, Old Berwick Historical Society President

“An impassioned ode to a New England house, American history, and eighteenth-century design. It is a book about life style choices, the realization of a dream, and the adventures, discoveries, pleasures, and challenges encountered along the way. Those who enjoy history, architecture, archaeology, research, antiquing, decorating, or open-hearth cooking (replete with recipes), will find pleasure in this evocative sketch of a house and its owners through time.”
Betsy Garrett Widmer, author of At Home: The American Family, 1750-1870

About the Author
Paula Bennett received a BA in French at the University of Maryland and her M.Ed. at Goucher College. For more than twenty years, she taught in public and private schools. Both Paula and her husband, Harvey, have been avid environmentalists and locavores since the early 1970s when they began to raise chickens, garden, and make their own wine. In 1994, she joined her husband’s family business, Matthew Bennett International, a philatelic auction house, which she helped develop. In 2013, Paula decided to semi-retire from the stamp auction world and immersed herself in further researching the history of her house in the town of South Berwick, Maine, where she and her husband lived between 2004 and 2017. The Bennetts, who have been married for more than half a century, currently reside in Washington D. C.

Imagining Ichabod: My Journey into 18th-Century America through History, Food, and a Georgian House
$29.95