History of the Peck House
Originally built in Middlebury, Connecticut in 1783 by Augustus Peck, we carefully dismantled, moved, and restored this 1,660 sq. ft. house to 27 acres in Deary, Idaho in 2020 as part of the Magnolia Network Restoration Road TV show.
The space
In 1776 at the age of 16, Augustus joined George Washington’s Continental Army as a private in the Third Connecticut Regiment, serving in the major engagements of the war including the Battles of Long Island, Germantown, and Monmouth and the harsh winters at Valley Forge and Jockey Hollow, as well as the surrender at Yorktown in 1781. Peck served in the army 6 1/2 years until the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1783, when he returned home and built this traditional New England “Cape” house, named after its origin, Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
The house features original hand-hewn oak timbers, hand-planed doors, and woodwork, new 12 over 12 pane windows, and sleeps six, with one king-size bed in the second-floor loft, a full-size bed in the original first floor bedroom, and a queen-size sofa bed. The full kitchen opens to the dining and living area, and the back addition includes a screened porch facing the surrounding pine forest. Rebuilt with year-round comfort in mind, the Peck House includes two full baths and radiant floor heat. We carefully moved the massive stone chimney, to Idaho, along with the brick oven, excellent for baking pizza.
Conveniently located near Moscow, Idaho, home of the University of Idaho and nearby Washington State University, Deary is an outdoor wonderland of mountains and rivers, with some of the best hiking, mountain biking, world-class trout, salmon, and steelhead fishing, big game hunting, as well as the gateway to the Bitterroot Wilderness, wildest area in the forty-eight states. When in Deary, be sure to visit the Pie Safe Bakery and the nationally award-winning Brush Creek Creamery, makers of many of the finest artisan cheeses in North America.
If you are interested in seeing a documentary on the moving and restoration of the Peck House you can now view it by:
Downloading the Discovery+ app.
Go to Magnolia Network
Restoration Road with Clint Harp,
Augustus Peck House
How the Peck House Moved to Idaho
In 2018 I was reading the publication "Old House Journal" when I came across a letter to the editor from a man in Connecticut inquiring whether anyone would be interested in an old Connecticut cape house in the town of Middlebury. If no one turned up, the local fire department would take it for a fire exercise. UGH! Being founder of a business that had already taken down and moved over four hundred historic American buildings from the Northeast to locations around the world, I contacted the letter writer. The process took two years of patient back and forth and by the spring of 2020 we had an agreement to relocate the house, which we came to learn August Peck had built sometime around 1784. The house had not been lived in for many years and the first floor was falling into the basement due to rot. Vandals had been regularly breaking in and the local land trust that now owned the house was happy to see it moved.
In the meantime, we had been given a TV show to do on our work by Chip and Joanna Gaines from our hometown in Waco, Texas for their new Magnolia Channel, part of the Discovery network. This little house would make the perfect show! But what a wreck it was. So, in the summer of 2020 we dismantled the house, board by board, nail by nail and shipped it to Texas for restoration and ultimate relocation to Deary, Idaho where my daughter and her family live, Brian and Rebeccah Salmeri.
All through the dismantling, restoration and rebuilding process, I kept wondering just who this August Peck was and what his life was like. We had found his grave in the old Middlebury cemetery that tellingly told us he had "Died Suddenly" at the age of fifty-two. So, let’s turn back the pages of history to the spring of 1776 and piece his story together. We can get a good glimpse into his life from the existing diary of another young Connecticut soldier, Joseph Plum Martin, who likely was a friend of Augustus. Augustus and Joseph were both 15 in 1775 when the American Revolution began. They both enlisted the next year in the American army under George Washington as it passed through Connecticut on its way from Boston to New York to meet the British army and its Hessian, German mercenaries in New York. The veteran British army had been routed from Boston, and were determined to make short work of the amateur American soldiers.
Joseph Martin goes on to tell of the incredible sufferings and deprivations of these American volunteers. Though our research continues on the exact history of Augustus’s regiment, like Martin, he probably was at the discouraging American defeat at the Battle of Long Island in 1776, the harried retreat to Philadelphia, the subsequent victory at Trenton, the bitter winter of 1777-1778 at Valley Forge, the missed opportunity at the Battle of Monmouth, the winter of 1779-1780 at Morristown where they were reduced to eating their leather shoes, and the final victory in 1781 at Yorktown. But, considering the slow communications in that day, it took till the spring of 1783 before the Treaty of Paris was signed and Augustus and Joseph could return home at the age of 23, young 6 1/2 year veterans of the struggle that birthed America.
Finally, in January of 2021 we had completed our task of restoration with all of the stories and discoveries we found. But we had yet to learn a story close to home, as I had a notion that Augustus was nearer to us than we thought. On a hunch, I called my daughter Rebeccah who keeps the family history and cares for the Peck House: "Bec, aren’t there Pecks in our family line?" Well, sure enough, we came to find out that we and Augustus are all descended from the Puritan William Peck who came to the nascent New Haven Colony with his brother Henry in 1638. Over a century later, at the time of the Revolution, Augustus was our first cousin! We hope you enjoyed this story, and that you enjoy your stay in the Peck House. And now that you have stayed in his home, his story belongs to you too.
Kevin Durkin
