Wesson Property

Wesson, a historic property currently owned for most of the year by Madelene Serverac Denisof, has a unique and varied history. Denisof, a schoolteacher residing in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was born in France, grew up in Russia, and emigrated to America with her mother, a physician, following the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.

From 1682 to 1933, Wesson saw numerous owners, suggesting its use as a speculative enterprise rather than a permanent residence during much of that time. The property featured a loom house, a blacksmith shop, and a grocery store. In the southwest corner of the farm, a mound called Hager's Island was the site of a liquor store operated by two elderly sisters. Local children often played under the grapevine leading up to the main house.

The existing dwelling dates back to at least the early 1880s. In the early 1900s, Cal Mitchell, a carpenter and one of Wesson's owners, added a story-and-a-half section. A cobbler, who made shoes for the residents of Wetipquin Neck, lived in the attic over this section. The farm also hosted a school in an upstairs room of the two-story section. As late as 1933, the property boasted eleven outbuildings. In the early twentieth century, young women who taught at the nearby schoolhouse near Sandy Hill boarded at the farm.