In Rebecca (known as cousin Reba to her close family) Yancey's book, Ancestors and descendants of Capt. William Layton Yancey and his wife Frances Lynn Lewis, 1600-1900 she notes the following regarding Hilltop:
"Like Tuckahoe the new house was in the form of an H. Each of the parallel sections had its own front door facing upstream. In one section, the first floor was devoted to parlors. with handsome mantels, and ornamental plaster designs in the ceilings. Doors above opened onto a long verandah approached from an outside stairway. The other section had a long dining room with large fireplace opposite the entrance."
She then goes on to write that the house was later converted to a L-shape, which is how it remained until recently. As much as I've tried envisioning the house as being like Tuckahoe, I cannot imagine the house being in such a configuration and then altered to an L-shape. For starters, a significant portion of the house would have had to have been dismantled, and there is simply no evidence of a former foundation. Thinking about how life would have been in those days, and the amount of manual labor required in the 1800s to do much of anything, I think she may be mistaken here.
However, it could be a matter of her description of the original structure being off, or perhaps a difference in terminology of the "H" shape. It could very well be that the two original lower rooms each had their own front entrance which would have indeed faced upstream. In fact, if you were to remove the siding from the front of the house revealing the interior structure, you would see two rooms stacked on top of one another, adjoined by the center hall, essentially forming an H. This is all just conjecture of course.
We believe that the house originally consisted only of the first four rooms, two downstairs and two upstairs, with a central staircase and hallway. The front door is located in the center of the house, with another exterior door opening onto the front porch roof. The sketch below depicts what is believed to have been the original structure. At the rear of the front two rooms are two doors with question marks by them. We have no definitive proof as to whether these doors existed, however, in the left room there is a door leading to the present dining room (see further down for the floor plan with the dining room), and the hinges and door style are the same as the door that opens to the center hall. On the room to the right, the area where the back door is there was a window that could have possibly been a door at one time to preserve the symmetry in the original structure.
On each end of the house is a chimney, which allowed for four fireplaces, one in each room.
At some point, probably in the 1840s or thereabouts, the back of the house was extended to give the house an L configuration. This addition consisted of a formal dining room and kitchen on the lower level, with two additional bedrooms on the second story. We have good reason to believe this was an addition and not part of the original structure. Reasons for this are as follows:
- the foundation on the original part of the house is dry-stacked fieldstone, whereas the remainder of the foundation contains mortar
- trim work is different in these sections of the house, with the older part of the house having smaller and thinner trim
- door hardware, especially hinges, is different
- the doors themselves are different - different proportions, doorways are siginificantly different in height
One interesting thing to note about the rear extension was that it added two exterior porches - one upstairs and one down. This added a number of exterior doors to the structure. At one point there were eight exterior doors! Below is a depiction of the first floor showing the exterior porch. The second floor is essentially the same, but the rooms are all bedrooms.
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