Statement of Significance

The Preston-Lafreniere Farm, a working farm for five successive generations in the Preston family, located upon a quintessentially Vermont picturesque setting of open agricultural land and timber lots at the north base of Camel's Hump Mountain and along the southern banks of the Winooski River, is a well preserved farmstead that has withstood the tests of time and the hardships of farming life from 1810-1948. The Preston-Lafreniere Farm is significant under criterion A for its contribution to the cadence of Vermont's agricultural history, and under criterion C for its preserved architectural styles of agricultural buildings and a farmstead type. John Preston, one of the original settlers in the town of Bolton, Vermont, built the side gabled, English style barn c. 1810-30, and subsequently a Classic Cottage, circa 1830, for the family homestead, establishing a grand and firm beginning to a successful family farm. As agricultural trends and ecological conditions transformed the farm type throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, additional barns and outbuildings were built to accommodate the changes in crop production and animal husbandry, according to "contemporary" architectural styles and mandated agricultural laws. The Preston-Lafreniere Farm, a significant property type being nominated under the Multiple Property Listing for Agricultural Resources in Vermont, is affiliated with the Historic Context of Sheep Farming 1810-1910, and Dairying from 1850-1941, and meets the registration requirements for the farmstead property type.

The Preston-Lafreniere Farm is a significant cultural resource because of its continuous ties to the agricultural exploits of five successive generations of the Preston family working the land. The farm is a well preserved time capsule showing how each generation was able to cultivate their fields, adapt their farming techniques, and concentrate their herding stocks to continuously yield a sustainable living off the same plot of land from 1790 to 1993. By reading the changes in the details of the barns and the farmstead, the cultural histories of the Preston-Lafreniere Farm, the Town of Bolton, and that of the State of Vermont can be told.

The barns on the property are an unwritten history of outdated building techniques, and agricultural and economic patterns that forced change upon the farming techniques of each successive generation of Prestons working the land. The farm house is a well-preserved piece of architectural history of a conservative farming family whose energies were sacrificed in the operation of the farm, rather than the continual modernizations of their home. With both change and stasis, the architectural history and agricultural heritage of the Preston farm unfolds an unique, yet archetypal, tale of a farming family in New England.

The landscape upon a farm with its physical beauty - the variety of shapes, colors and textures of its buildings, machinery, fields, and forests - provides a sense of place that is unique in its venue, yet paramount in its relationship to Vermont's agricultural heritage. The farm, when viewed from afar, yields images of pastoral and bucolic serenity, and when viewed from close by, fosters a feeling of hardship of old worn hands working from sunrise to sunset, only to repeat the pattern again the following morning. It is these images of our agricultural and architectural histories that give Vermont its sense of place and identity in the larger context of our nation's cultural history. Providing a record of the past of a farming family which worked the land for five successive generations, maintains this unique sense of place, identity and character of Vermont's Agricultural and Architectural Heritage.

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