On the corner of Daniel and Chapel streets stands the oldest brick building in Portsmouth--the Warner House. It was built in 1718 by Captain Archibald Macpheadris, a Scotchman, as his name indicates, a wealthy merchant, and a member of the King's Council. He was the chief projector of one of the earliest iron-works established in America. Captain Macpheadris married Sarah Wentworth, one of the sixteen children of Governor John Wentworth, and died in 1729, leaving a daughter, Mary, whose portrait, with that of her mother, painted by the ubiquitous Copley, still hangs in the parlor of this house, which is not known by the name of Captain Macpheadris, but by that of his son-in-law, Hon. Jonathan Warner, a member of the King's Council until the revolt of the colonies. "We well recollect Mr. Warner,"says Mr. Brewster, writing in 1858, "as one of the last of the cocked hats. As in a vision of early childhood he is still before us, in all the dignity of the aristocratic crown officers. That broad-backed, long-skirted brown coat, those small-clothes and silk stockings, those silver buckles, and that cane--we see them still, although the life that filled and moved them ceased half a century ago."The Warner House, a three-story building with gambrel roof and luthern windows, is as fine and substantial an exponent of the architecture of the period as you are likely to meet with anywhere in New England. The eighteen-inch walls are of brick brought from Holland, as were also many of the materials used in the building--the hearth-stones, tiles, etc. Hewn-stone underpinnings were seldom adopted in those days; the brick-work rests directly upon the solid walls of the cellar. The interior is rich in paneling and wood carvings about the mantel-shelves, the deep-set windows, and along the cornices. The halls are wide and long, after a by-gone fashion, with handsome staircases, set at an easy angle, and not standing nearly upright, like those ladders by which one reaches the upper chambers of a modern house. The principal rooms are paneled to the ceiling, and have large open chimney-places, adorned with the quaintest of Dutch files. In one of the parlors of the Warner House there is a choice store of family relics--china, silver-plate, costumes, old clocks, and the like. There are some interesting paintings, too--not by Copley this time. On a broad space each side of the hall windows, at the head of the staircase, are pictures of two Indians, life size. They are probably portraits of some of the numerous chiefs with whom Captain Macphaedris had dealings, for the captain was engaged in the fur as well as in the iron business. Some enormous elk antlers, presented to Macpheadris by his red friends, are hanging in the lower hall.
By mere chance, thirty or forty years ago, some long-hidden paintings on the walls of this lower hall were brought to light.
In repairing the front entry it became necessary to remove the paper, of which four or five layers had accumulated. A one place, where several coats had peeled off cleanly, a horse's hoof was observed by a little girl of the family. The workman then began removing the paper carefully; first the legs, then the body of a horse with a rider were revealed, and the astonished paper-hanger presently stood before a life-size representation of Governor Phipps on his charger. The workman called other persons to his assistance, and the remaining portions of the wall were speedily stripped, laying bare four or five hundred square feet covered with sketches in color, landscapes, views of unknown cities, Biblical scenes, and modern figure-pieces, among which was a lady at a spinning-wheel. Until then no person in the land of the living had had any knowledge of those hidden pictures. An old dame of eighty, who had visited at the house intimately ever since her childhood, all but refused to believe her spectacles (though Supply Ham made them(1.)) when brought face to face with the frescoes. (1. In the early part of this century, Supply Ham was the leading optician and watchmaker of Portsmouth.)The place is rich in bricabrac, but there is nothing more curious that these incongruous printings, clearly the work of a practiced hand. Even the outside of the old edifice is not without its interest for an antiquarian. The lightening-rod which protects the Warner House to-day was put up under Benjamin Franklin's own supervision in 1762--such at all events is the credited tradition--and is supposed to be the first rod put up in New Hampshire. A lightening-rod "personally conducted" by Benjamin Franklin ought to be an attractive object to even the least susceptible electricity. The Warner House has another imperative claim on the good-will of the visitor--it is not positively known that George Washington ever slept there.
