Pierson House

The following article appeared in the Orange County Post on Thursday, November 27, 1980 on Page 10.


Big Little Britain

Obituary Of The

Pierson House

by Margaret V. S. Wallace

August 1980. The house has been sick ever since the M.T.A. descended like a scavenger on Little Britain. Today it died. The wreckers have torn it apart. The bulldozers are burying the remains.

The house has a long history. Andrew McDowell bought the site in 1732, and sold it and its 215 acres to his cousin, Patrick McClaughry in 1737. He may have built first a little to the north, but the history of the house proves that he finally built where the Pierson house stood. The house was smaller at first, then enlarged, perhaps more than once.

Patrick McClaughry had a daughter Mary. She married George Denniston, one of the six sons of the pioneer settler, Alexander Denniston. George Denniston was an officer in a militia company during the Revolution, in which his five brothers also served. He served all through the war in various capacities, and held several important offices in the local government during and after the war. Too, he was a smart business man, buying and selling land. The land he inherited from his father, on what is now Toleman Road, he gave to his son William.

He and Mary lived in the house that had been Mary's father's, Mary's childhood home, the McClaughry house. To own it he had to buy the rights of the other heirs.

Their son James was the next owner and occupant. He left it to his son David. David died young. His brother Hamilton's son Charles sold the property to George R. Shaw of Fishkill in 1877. He sold in 1882 5o Edward D. Pierson of Warwick.

Mr. Pierson did much for Little Britain about a hundred years ago. He built the Little Britain store and post office with an apartment on the second floor for the storekeeper and postmaster. That building still stands, no longer a store. He built the creamery where the Grange stands now. He produced much milk on his two large farms and bought milk from the neighborhood farmers. He enlarged the stream into a pond for ice, and built a large ice house, and a barn near the creamery for the big horses that drew the heavy loads of milk in big cans, some to the O. and W. railroad station to be sent to New York by rail, and some to Newburgh to be shipped by boats. We wonder if it was sweet when it arrived. There were other industries at the Little Britain station, coal lumber and feed. The death of the O. and W. railroad undid Edward Pierson's accomplishments.

He married Elizabeth Oliver who had come from East Springfield, near Cooperstown, to teach school in Little Britain. He enlarged the house and made it a beautiful home. It had the first running water in Little Britain. The power was from a windmill in the back yard.

There was a carriage house and stable back of the house, and further north a large cow barn.

The Pierson home was lovely, really a showplace. It never occurred to us that it could come to such a sad end. Homes on earth vanish after awhile.

How very important it is to have a permanent home. Jesus Christ has offered a beautiful home with Him in Heaven for all eternity. To accept His wonderful offer, once must receive Him as Savior.


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Created by Elizabeth Finley Frasier

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Created May 21, 2000