Blue-grass blade (Lexington, Ky.), January 26, 1908
House Of Paine Doomed To Destruction
The old house in North street, New Rochelle, formerly the home of Thomas Paine, author of the Age of Reason, has just been sold for $100, and it is reported that the purchaser will dismantle it and use it for firewood. The owner of the house, Charles W. See, has just completed a new residence, and as there is not room for two buildings on his land, the Paine house, which has been one of the landmarks of New Rochelle for nearly 200 years, will have to go.
According to the records in New Rochelle, the house was built about 1720 by Huguenot refugees who fled from La Rochelle in France following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes and settled in upper New Rochelle. At the time of the Revolution the house was occupied by Frederick Deveau, a Tory. At the close of that struggle it was confiscated by the American Congress and, together with 365 acres of land, given to Paine for his services. Paine lived in the house at various times until his death in New York about 1809. The house was then sold to the Paine Association, which held it for several years and then sold it to William Hayes, who in turn sold it to Wesley See, father of the present occupant, who has sold it to a contractor.
The See family found Paine’s old brass and irons and Franklin stoves in a closet in the room which he formerly occupied as a study, and gave them, with other relics, to a plumber, who has for several years had them on exhibition in his shop. Embedded in the walls of the old house are two bullets which were fired at Paine while he sat by his window writing his memories of the French Revolution. The house has been remodelled until hardly a vestige of the original remains. The farm, with the exception of an acre or two reserved by Mr. See, has been sold to a realty company, which is now engaged in cutting it up into building plots.
Col. W. A. Croffutt then spoke of Paine’s great work in freeing men from superstition as well as from the tyranny that kings claimed a divine right to inflict. Exhibiting a copy of Ethan Allen’s Oracles of Reason, he said:
“Ethan Allen’s statue is in Statuary Hall in the Capitol, and the time has come to put Thomas Paine’s statue there, too.”
The audience enthusiastically applauded this remark.