WINDSOR — Historic Windsor sold a historic home once owned by a Vermont state Supreme Court judge and slave owner to an area contractor.
Historic Windsor, a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving Windsor’s history, purchased the house, located at 70 State St., in 2008 after it fell into disrepair and started to work to stabilize the property.
It was sold to Rich Thomas, a former chair of the Windsor Selectboard, for $115,000 on Dec. 10, according to a news release.
“I knew Rich was the right person to take the ownership of the property when he came into the office to talk with me and said he had wanted to live in the house for many years,” Historic Windsor Executive Director Judy Hayward said in a news release.
He is planning on turning it into a single-family home.
“Right then and there, I knew he had the ‘right stuff,’ to take on this big and important project,” Hayward said. “It takes vision, experience, and passion to create a respectful rehabilitation plan.”
The two-story home has a controversial history. The Stephen Jacob House was named for the Windsor resident who served as a judge in the late 1700s and early 1800s.
During that time, he also enslaved an African American woman named Dinah Mason, despite slavery being illegal in the state. By 1800, Dinah Mason was no longer living at Jacob’s house and she became sick. At that point, the town of Windsor sued Jacob claiming that he was responsible for her care, not the town.
The court ended up ruling in his favor, stating that since slavery was illegal in Vermont, Mason could not have been a slave.
In the centuries since, Jacob House has been a private residence and apartments. When Historic Windsor purchased the home, staff and volunteers started digging into its history and tried to tell more of Mason’s story.
In 2022, it worked with the Vermont Division for Historic Preservation to erect a historical marker in her honor outside of Jacob House.
CORRECTION: Jacob House is located at 70 State St. in Windsor. A previous version of this story contained an incorrect street number.