The Ashleys’ home, built on the banks of the Housatonic River, was a timber-framed, two-story, center-chimney dwelling with a lean-to across the back, in the saltbox form. In it, John and Hannah raised four children and held at least eight people in bondage.
Colonel Ashley was a wealthy landowner and businessman, as well as the largest enslaver in Sheffield and possibly all of Berkshire County. A young woman named Bett was among those enslaved here. In 1781, Bett and an enslaved man named Brom sued Colonel Ashley for their freedom and won. She took a new name: Elizabeth Freeman.
Read Her Story
A House Rebuilt
Around 1770, with his children grown, Ashley remodeled. A Connecticut River Valley joiner enhanced the rooms with new paneling and moldings; outside, new trim and triangular pedimented doorways were added at the front and side. This was the house Bett knew in her last decade in Sheffield.
In January 1773, three years before the Declaration of Independence, eleven Sheffield men drafted the town’s grievances against Britain—possibly in the house’s newly remodeled upstairs study. Ashley chaired the committee, while Theodore Sedgwick wrote the Resolves that declared that “Mankind in a state of nature are equal, free, and independent.”
About 1810, a decade after Ashley’s death, his grandson John Ashley IV renovated again: the ground floor was reconfigured, the kitchen moved to a rear room, the lean-to replaced with an ell, and a new chimney and a tight spiral staircase installed.
The Ashley family sold the house in 1838. The Brewers, who owned it from 1882 to 1923, moved into another house across the street around 1900 and left it to serve as a barn for logs, hay, chickens, and pigs.
In 1930, Ashley descendant Harry Brigham and his architect wife Mary moved the house a quarter mile, without its chimney, and restored it to its 1770s and 1810s appearance. The ell and barn were left behind and demolished. Col. Ashley House, Inc. opened the house as a museum in 1959, and The Trustees of Reservations have been stewards of the property since 1972.
