Readers with an interest in Dover’s oldest homes may have noticed the Tisdale House situated at the corner of Walpole and Hartford Streets. Local historian Frank Smith tells us that this house was built for Captain Henry Tisdale in 1774. Given its extraordinary similarity to the Benjamin Caryl House, it is probable that the Tisdale House was also built by Ralph Day of Dedham Street (1717-1795). Henry Tisdale was born in Lebanon, CT in 1750, one of three brothers who settled in Dover and Medfield just prior to the Revolution. On January 4, 1774 he was married by Reverend Benjamin Caryl to Sarah Fisher, daughter of Samuel Fisher and his second wife, Mary Chickering. Sarah’s maternal Grandfather was Samuel Chickering, the original settler of Powissett Street, and the Tisdale land is said to have been a part of the Samuel Chickering estate. Henry Tisdale was a hatter by trade and he is said to have left a beaver hat on his work bench to join Captain Ebenezer Battelle’s Company of Minute Men as they gathered on the morning of April 19, 1775.

With Henry Tisdale’s death in 1814 the property passed to his son, Captain James Tisdale (1780-1854) who married Olive Smith in 1805. James Tisdale was a noted auctioneer with a quick wit whose misadventure while attempting to gather cranberries from a flooded section of the brook that runs just south of the house earned him the nickname “Admiral” and caused the brook to be known ever after as Tubwreck Brook. His actual title was acquired while serving as a cavalry officer during the War of 1812. In addition, James Tisdale was the official keeper of the Dedham & Hartford Turnpike’s toll house which was situated opposite his house on what is now Hartford Street. The Turnpike, chartered in 1804 and built in 1806, served as the main road between Dedham and Hartford, CT. James Tisdale’s in-laws, Elijah and Rebecca Hastings, resided in the toll house and were charged with collecting the gate fees.

On James Tisdale’s death in 1854 the property passed to his son, William Atribes Tisdale (1813-1893) who married his second cousin, Sybil Clark Tisdale, in 1839. Smith notes that William Tisdale was a man of considerable musical ability and that in those years the house was home to a neighborhood orchestra in which William played the flute, his wife Sybil the piano, and his uncle Fisher Tisdale the tambourine, triangle, and bells.

With William’s death in 1893 his son Ansel Tisdale sold the property  to John Valentine Schaffner (1861-1936). At some point between 1894 and 1899 Schaffner constructed the existing barn and relocated the old toll house from its original site on the opposite side of Hartford Street to the rear of his house. In 1937, the property, which then encompassed 70 acres, was conveyed by the John V. Schaffner heirs to his widow, Mary. With the death of Mary Schaffner in 1948 the farm was subdivided and the house lot reduced to slightly more than three acres.

By Elisha Lee