Fooled the British?
the founders of the town, who had perhaps one of the largest and best houses around, a two-and-a-halfstory brick structure on Mulberry St. While the Brits may or may not have been aiming at that particular house, it would have been surprising if it was not hit due to its proximity to the action. Even if true, the story could have been embellished a bit down the years. The progression perhaps being first that the house was hit, next that the cannon ball was still lodged in the wall and finally that it crashed in through a dormer window, leaving burn marks as it rolled down the stairs past Fairbanks’ mother and grandmother. But whatever way it happened, it is perfectly reason-
ball at all, and pointed out that the only account of it was given nearly a century later by an elderly man, Wm. Fairbanks, by which time his memory may not have been reliable. And why had no one mentioned it before? Wasn’t it suspicious that the story first appeared in 1907, so close to the 1913 centennial celebration? But Brig. Gen. Perry Benson wrote that some of the houses were “perforated.” And the anonymous Eastonian wrote that “grape shot fell like hail in the town, and there [sic] balls went through a number of the houses.” The Cannonball House was owned by William Marchant, one of
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124 S. Aurora Street, Easton · 410-822-1240 62