Nathan Beman chose the highest point on his property to site the house and oriented it toward the southwest, which was the most favorable direction for maximum solar gain. Both this and construction of the fireplace on the northwest side of the house are evidence of an understanding of elemental domestic site planning and engineering. The spring-fed Bailey Brook, 900 feet to the south, would have been a reliable, if inconvenient, source of cold, fresh water for both household use and for livestock. Barrels may also have been placed at the corners of the house to catch rainwater.

The Beman family lived what can be termed a “subsistence farming” lifestyle. They did not keep livestock beyond a cow and one or possibly two oxen and did not grow any large-scale crops. Their intention appears to be able to meet the needs of the family from the property, but they did not appear to view agriculture as a source of disposable income. Rather, “the Bemans instead relied upon their pioneer homestead as a jumping-off point for other pursuits, namely a new house and tavern that was, …, built elsewhere.”

Neither Beman nor his fellow founder and brother-in-law, Benjamin Roberts, were suited by experience, inclination, or desire to pursue farming as a means to secure a living. Instead, both Beman and Roberts eventually opened taverns, each on the opposite ends of town to the east and west.

From the artifact deposits, it is clear that the family homestead inhabited a compact space, likely within a fenced in area. Virtually all daily and seasonal activities focused on the cabin, door yard, sheet midden (trash area) and the area near a barn and stable.

As the land was heavily forested and there was no sawmill at the time, the home was undoubtedly made of hewn logs. The structure had some glass windows, a shallow stone foundation, a dirt floor, and a loft area probably provided sleeping space. The location of a traditional root cellar and outhouse were not revealed in the limited excavation.

On some early homesteads, a pioneer family might have just a fire hearth made by placing flat stones on the floor with the smoke making its way out of the cabin through a hole in the roof. However, the Beman cabin had a solidly built stone and mortar fireplace and chimney, located on the northwest wall.

Furniture was sparse. Carrying large pieces from Plattsburgh was impossible along the narrow horse and oxcart path that connected Chateaugay to the eastern communities. The first beds, tables, chairs, etc. in these very early homes were crude and fashioned with axe, knife or adz.

The archeological evidence for the Beman family’s marginal economic circumstances ranges from reworked metal scrap and cheap ceramics to living in a log house when neighbors apparently had erected frame houses to replace the frontier residences of the settler’s generation.

With survival the main concern, activities centered on securing food for family and livestock. Wild grasses were collected for livestock feed during the long, cold winters. Using oxen, the land was slowly cleared for crops. The Bemans owned a milk cow and one or two oxen. Early pioneers relied on root crops. Potatoes and/or turnips were most often the first crop successfully grown. The archeological evidence from the sheet midden indicates the Beman’s diet consisted mostly of beef, pork, and mutton, fowl, and wild game. Hunting and foraging for wild foods could also take significant amounts of a family’s time.

By 1806, Nathan Beman was granted a license for a “Public Inn and Tavern” in his home. There was no evidence unearthed in the homestead excavation to support a tavern having been run there. The family had a second home somewhere on Main Street, near the Four Corners, where the tavern was located.

The family lived in the Main Street building while the tavern/inn operated and remained after it closed. In 1814, the building the Bemans had near the Four Corners was burned after it was ransacked by the British, and the family moved back to the homestead cabin. By this time, the household most likely only consisted of Nathan, his wife Jemima, and youngest child, George W.P., aged 12.

Following the burning of the tavern, Nathan, at the age of 59, reenlisted in Col. Eggleston‘s militia regiment and served for 11 days towards the end of the War of 1812. Therefore, when he applied for a military pension in 1818, it was based on both his service during the American Revolution and his brief enlistment in the War of 1812.

Nathan and Jemima persisted through their sixties and seventies at the homestead house, but the property languished. The couple had neither the ability nor the means to make improvements or even to keep up the place. Finally in June 1840, when they were in their early eighties, they moved to live with their son Aaron on his farm in the town of Malone. By 1846, both had died. No family members lived on the homestead, and it remained abandoned and empty. In 1872, their grandson, Nathan (son of George W.P.), sold the homestead property and the seventy-five-year history of the land being owned by a Beman came to an end.

Nathan Beman spent his early life involved in the great, nation-founding adventure of the Revolutionary War, and traversing Vermont for two decades searching for a place where his family could be secure. Apparently, he was content to live out his life in a simple log homestead on the Northern New York frontier.