Caldwell County MO Archives History .....ANDREW BAKER HOUSE IN NEW YORK TOWNSHIP 
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Karen Walker khw4@yahoo.com September 4, 2008, 4:28 pm

THE OLD ANDREW BAKER HOUSE IN NEW YORK TOWNSHIP
	Narrator:  Robert Morrison of New York Township

     Robert Morrison and his father before him have both owned and lived on 
the old Andrew Baker farm in New York township, where the well known stone 
house stands, now used as a granary.
     The house was built by Elder Andrew Baker, the well known Baptist 
preacher-farmer of Caldwell county in the early sixties.  Mr. Morrison says 
that Mr. Baker moved his family into it on the day of the battle of Lexington 
in the Civil War, that so old Andrew told his father, saying that they heard 
the shots clear up to the Baker's home and the Frazier's near by.  Mr. Baker's 
first wife was dead by 1861, and his first family of children were then 
married off or soon were afterward.  (For an interview concerning the Baker 
family, see the Williamson interview in the 1934 series.)
     The house is built of courses of native rock with the big rocks used at 
the corners and over doors and windows to keep it on the straight and the 
smaller rocks used in regular rows between.  It is a two story front, but runs 
back to a deep slant to the kitchen in the rear.  Over the kitchen appears to 
have been an attic or possibly a sleeping room for the children.  The pitch of 
the roof is quite high in front.  The rock walls are probably 18 inches deep.  
It once had shutters as shown by the shutter notches left at the windows.  One 
could imagine it had much class when it was built, at any rate people always 
mention it when mentioning old Elder Baker.  It looks now as if it could stand 
for 200 years.  It has to be seen to appreciate the amount of work given to 
its construction.
     The house is of the old L type of construction, the back rooms being an 
extension from the east end of the building.  The south west corner was 
occupied by a porch, the rafters of which were put in slots or notches in the 
stone.  At both ends of the house, are dressed stone chimneys from bottom to 
the top of the house.
     Mr. Morrison in speaking of the old graves and grave stones to be found 
on the place near the old stone house, says that there are eight graves on the 
farm, although not that many stones are to be found.  At one time, his father 
offered to pay one half the expenses of moving the bodies to Hopewell cemetery 
(fairly close by) but the Fraziers (whose early dead lie there) would not 
agree to it.  There are now about four stones left, piled up by the fence by 
the old house.  The road to the house now runs either by or over these graves.
     Interview  November 1934.


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