I enjoyed a visit to Cooperstown over the Memorial Day weekend, and stayed in a B&B called The Menagerie at the Corey House (now closed, unfortunately). For the sake of disclosure, it was owned by long-time friends of mine, but I wanted to write a bit about my own curiosity for a better understanding of the history of this location.
Originally known as The Oliver Corey House, it was built in the early 1800s. The trigger for where my exploration goes in a different direction is the description of Oliver Corey as “a working farmer and a fifer in the Revolutionary War.” I wanted to see if I could find out more about Oliver Corey, and why a home references his name over 200 years later, and found some interesting history on a Corey Family website. I was interested in particular about his fifer activities in the Revolutionary War, as the description of such brings to mind the famous painting “The Spirit of ’76,” by Archibald Willard, the image of which (below left) was one of several versions painted by the artist, this one in 1876. The image below right is a detail of a Revolutionary War fifer from an engraving from the 1780s, just to give you another view of a fifer.
Back to Oliver Corey and his duty as a fifer, I learned from one document on the Corey Family website (see page 5 here) that he joined the war effort as General John Stark passed through Corey’s childhood hometown of Charlestown, NH, with the general on his way to the Battle of Bennington, where the revolutionaries defeated two detachments of British General John Burgoyne’s invading army in 1777. From what I can gather, Oliver Corey was born in 1764, which would have made him approximately a pre-teen or teenager during the Revolutionary War. His joining the war effort as a kid would be explained by further research that describes the role of fifer as usually handled by boys too young to fight; their role was to help infantry battalions to keep marching pace, and also to relay orders in the form of sequences of musical signals.
Another document on the Corey Family website (see page 14 here) doesn’t mention General Stark or Bennington but rather marching with General Sullivan to Trenton after General George Washington had taken British prisoners there.
At any rate, despite the ambiguity of these Revolutionary War accounts for Oliver Corey, it is known that he settled in the Cooperstown area, built this house and lived here with his wife and daughters. While getting a tour of the home from my friend Pam, the proprietor of the B&B, she pointed out parts of the original house that remain intact (two additions came in later years). One thing that caught my attention was the wide wood plank flooring that had antique charm in its imperfections in the room where I stayed (The “Safari Anyone?” room). I realize that mentioning the floor is a bit odd when there were so many other details about both the room and the Corey House in general that I could write about, but walking barefoot across the floor and feeling the very slight curve of some planks, it brought an awareness of standing on a historical aspect of a 200+ year old house that one would never even consider when walking on any contemporary flooring – you can see a large picture which might better visually explain my fascination with the floor here.
More on Cooperstown and The Menagerie at the Corey House coming soon!
The fife could be used as a signal because the higher registers of this instrument have piercing sounds that could be heard above the sounds of battle. Fife and drum signals also told soldiers in camp when to wake up, fetch wood or provisions, and show up for church. I’d be curious, though, what song was used for the church signal?