History: An Old House Reveals Its Secret
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| A stoneware jug signed by I.V. Machett |
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| Krasniqi found the papers behind the door frame |
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| The Machett Document |
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| The Machett House on Hudson Street |
November 22, 2006
When Haki Krasniqi was pulling apart the door and its frame on a renovation project at a house on Hudson Street, he noticed a paper sticking out of the pile of wood he was about to throw away.
“It was meant to be that this paper was found,” says Haki, who believes that it would have been so easy to overlook the yellow paper amid the construction debris.
Haki found nailed to the back of the door frame a June 1853 edition of the Methodist Church’s publication, “The Advocate,” and inside was another letter, neatly folded in thirds. The document was sealed with wax.
On the outside of the document, he read a note, asking that it "be opened and read by a Methodist preacher at some future time.” Unwilling to open it, Haki gave it to the owner of the house, Deke Hazirjian, who opened it and read a document apparently written by the man who built the house in 1853.
Signed by Isaac V. Machett, the letter bears testimony to the man’s “change of heart’ when he joined the Methodist Episcopal Church and became a ‘living witness to the same power of the grace of God” in 1833.
Machett also wrote that he was a stoneware manufacturer and that he and his wife had four sons and six daughters.
Hazirjian says that he had learned from town historian Janet Dempsey that a potter had been active in that area in the 1800s. Machett’s pottery is still in existence today.
Hazirjian is having the document framed to hang in the house.
Here’s the transcript of the document:
Outside:
“To be Opened and Read by a Methodist Preacher at some future time"
Inside:
"Isaac V. Machett Owner and Founder of this house. Born in Newark N Jersey May 5th-1797. Came to Cornwall Feb 1829. Experienced the new birth and a change of heart in AD 1833, Joined the Methodist Episcopal Church and am now a living witness of the same and the power of the grace of god. This house built 1853. The writing enclosed July 20th, 1853 by your humble servant Isaac V. Machett A manufacturer of stoneware. A wife and four sons and six daughters spring from the Hoganites (Huguenots) or the Pilgrims of Plimouth."
While plenty of research of Machett remains to be done, marriage documents from Newark, New Jersey show that Isaac V. Machett married Mary Brier in 1819. Ten years later they moved to Cornwall.
In a speech given in 1987 by Robert P. White, assistant curator of the Old Museum Village in Monroe, he recognized the contribution of Machett:
"During the 19th Century, the Town of Cornwall was the center of a fairly large potting and brickmaking operation. Clays suitable for both brick and pottery were abundant in the vicinity. The clay deposits lay in a very unusual formation in that they were separated by layers of sand. The clay found in this formation was ideal for brickmaking as only very small amounts of additional sand were needed.
During the mid-19th Century, the pottery of I. V. Machett at Cornwall Landing produced a fair article of ware - the body was made either of local stone ware or in combination with local red ware clay and either salt-glazed or Albany slipped.” From http://members.aol.com/ggilb10335/Mandeville.html
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