This updated 2018 report of investigation summarizes 2013-2017 research into nine Cape-style houses spawned by the 2013 discovery and repatriation of four ca. 1820-1830s shoes concealed in the chimney wall of the parsonage house of the Great Cranberry Congregational Church. To read the full report visit our catalogue at https://www.gcihs.org/archives/items/show/12970. Revised version is twenty-two pages with photos and bibliography as of March 28, 2018, and includes findings of a 2015 dendrochronology project. This study of the parsonage house with its neighboring Cape-style houses and the separate 2013 study of the nearby ca. 1826 Preble house documents a cluster of historic island houses on the verge of becoming unrecognizable through remodeling. Research reveals folk practices, the oeuvre of local 19th-century house builders; Cape-style design innovations; granite and lumber sources; dendrochronology study; and early 19th-century Bulger and Spurling family histories, including the childhood home of Civil War Medal of Honor recipient General Andrew Barclay Spurling. See also concealed shoe research: 2013.252.1979.
