Loin Humphrey House (1797)

The house at 124 West Road in Canton was built in 1797 by Loin Humphrey (1777-1854). Loin was remembered by Sylvester Barbour in his Reminiscences (1908) as “a man of keen mind and an interesting talker. I remember him well; he was a noticeable figure on the street, with his long homemade, straight walking cane, extending above his hand several inches. His sons were men of great intelligence and prominence.” The house has an 80-foot rear ell, the roof which partly covers what was once a separate and perhaps older house. Many of the rooms in the house retain evidence of wall stenciling that was done in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. It is said that the man who did the stenciling boarded at the house.