Tour of Homes

15 West Liberty St.

A pivotal house. This house was built in the 1820s by H. B. Hoover and was later sold to Isaac Witherspoon, one of York's most renowned statesmen. The Witherspoon family inhabited the house for almost a century until it was sold to John J. Hunter, one of the last surviving Confederate Veterans living in Yorkville. Mr. Hunter married Elizabeth Winslow Lindsay, a direct descendant of Mary Chilton, the first women to step off the Mayflower, and of Governor Winslow, one of the first colonial governors. Mary Chilton's eleventh-generation granddaughter, Mrs. Agnes Hunter Lawton, lived in the home until her death in 1990.

“Miss Agnes,” as she was known in York, owned a tablecloth that tradition says was used at the first Thanksgiving dinner. During her many years of teaching fifth graders at York Elementary School, she told the children that the Native Americans made the spots on the linen cloth.

The house reflects the interest in cooling and cross-ventilation, with all the rooms open to the exterior. An early interpretation of the Greek Revival influence in York is the front portico, supported by three columns rather than the four-column style. A detached brick kitchen, one of the few remaining in the Up-Country, still stands in the rear.
This home is on the National Register of Historic Places.

West Liberty Street