One of the earliest known photos of the house taken in 1880.  The house’s original c.1800 center section is clearly shown in this picture, prior to the 1893 northern addition. The original driveway alignment is clear here.  Today the small dirt road has been moved about a hundred feet farther away (thank heavens) and is now a state highway.  The highway was shifted in the 1930’s when the state took over the road.  The Y entrance no longer exists; the south arm has vanished, though you can find it in the woods with a shovel easily! One of its last vestiges was the location of the mailbox at a seemingly anomalous point half-way along the property’s front line, apparently unconnected to any house, that was finally changed just this fall.  The northern arm has been slightly straightened and extended and is now the drive (the Rabbit Hole).

Obviously the title of Rabbit Hole doesn’t apply yet.  (No I don’t know if it was supposed to refer to Alice or not, I sometimes think it ought)  All that open space is now a fully mature stand of Norway Spruce, pine, maple, and oak.  The taller of the two Norways, to the left, in this picture still stands at 109 feet tall and probably 150-160 years old at the least, since it was clearly well over twenty years old in that photo, so at or before the Civil War.  The small maples you can see in a line going across the Y are now old trees, they are no longer immediately obvious as a line of maples because they are buried in the woods, but once you look it is clear.