OTISFIELD — What’s the oldest house in town?

That’s a question Otisfield Historical Society member Jean Hankins said is not easy to answer.

“I really don’t like to answer that, because it’s very hard to put an exact date on a house,” she said.

But on Oct. 25, she will reveal tentative dates on 40 houses in town, perhaps revealing some of the oldest if not the oldest.

The society will give a PowerPoint presentation and discussion about many of the town’s old houses. Some are on main streets and others are on back roads, seldom seen, she said. The presentation will be given during at the society’s meeting at 7 p.m. at the East Otisfield Community Hall on Route 121. The meeting is free and open to the public.

Hankins said the presentation is a “preliminary” study of the information the society has been collecting since 1981 when residents were first asked to participate in a countywide survey of historical architecture. Surveys were also done in the following years when society members inventoried their historical buildings.

Ethel Bean Turner, who promoted the idea for a town historical society some 30 years ago with the help of other families in town, said the Maine Historical Preservation Commission requested the survey at that time in all of Maine’s counties to update its own records.

“Oxford County was only one of a very few of the counties that got finished,” Turner said. The survey involved filling out forms with dates, architectural features, pictures, measurement and other information on old houses.

The survey also led, in 1984, to the publication of Randall Bennett’s book, Oxford County, Maine: A Guide to Its Historic Architecture, which includes a chapter on Otisfield.

Turner said there was a huge turnout of people at that time but not all the houses were surveyed and new “old” houses have been added to the list in the last 30 years.

So the work began again and now tentative dates have been put on 40 houses dated before 1840. Hankins said these houses will be the subject of her PowerPoint presentation on Oct. 25.

Hankins said the society will explain the methods historians use to date old houses and why it is so difficult to sometimes pinpoint a date.

ldixon@sunjournal.com

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