When lifelong Newtown resident Ed Forbell read the August 1, 2014, story “A Final Farewell To Fredericka House” in The Newtown Bee, he knew that a relic still remained of the historic Church Hill Road home.

Built around 1810 by a member of the Sanford family, the house at 92 Church Hill Road was given to Elizabeth C. Sanford by her brother, David, in 1842, when she married Edmond Trowbridge Hastings Gibson, a New York broker. (Among the Gibson relatives was Charles Dana Gibson, creator of the iconic Gibson Girl drawings of the 1890s.)

The Gibson House, as it was then known, was purchased in 1926 by Florence Schepp and given to the First Presbyterian Church of New York City to provide a summer refuge for needy city children. It was named for Fredericka Bauer Schepp, a woman who, according to separate Newtown Bee articles, was either Florence Schepp’s mother or grandmother. The Fredericka House functioned as a summer camp for girls, and later for both boys and girls, throughout the 1940s and 1950s, and was eventually sold to Newtown United Methodist Church.

In 1967, the Fredericka House was torn down to make way for the 1972 move of the Methodist Church building from Dayton Street to its present location on Church Hill Road. As was the common practice in the mid-20th Century, when Fredericka House was demolished, its wood, lathe, plaster, and foundation were allowed to collapse into the basement. It was this pile of rubble beneath the parking lot of the Newtown United Methodist Church that was exhumed in late July. A full dumpster was hauled away, and all that had been the Fredericka House disappeared… almost.

In September, Mr Forbell shared his secret with The Newtown Bee: the gazebo that had graced the property at 92 Church Hill Road still existed. His neighbor, the late Harriet Schultz, had had the Fredericka House gazebo moved to the grounds of her 121 Walnut Tree Hill Road home, “in the 1940s or 1950s, or maybe later,” recalled Mr Forbell. Local builder Nick Danszar had conveyed the structure from the center of Sandy Hook to its new site, he said.

In the reminisces of Colleen Lizotte and her daughter, Loretta Holly Oliveira, as recorded in Newtown Remembered, edited by Andrea Zimmermann, Dan Cruson, and Mary Maki, the structure is dated to the 1950s. Ms Lizotte recalls that she and her husband were hired as caretakers for the Fredericka House, sometime around 1952 or 1953. The family, including Ms Oliveira and her brother, David, lived in the smaller home on the property for nearly five years, a “very memorable” time, according to Ms Oliveira.

“We had a lot of fun at that place… My dad made the swings. He made the lean-to, he made the gazebo,” Ms Oliveira says in the oral history.

As the occasional handy man and groundskeeper for Ms Schultz in the early 1990s, Mr Forbell heard from Ms Schultz how the gazebo had been moved from Sandy Hook Center to Walnut Tree Hill, where it still stands.

“I did replace some rotten parts on the gazebo at one time,” Mr Forbell said, and cleared some brush away from around it. He was pleased to see in recent years that the new owners at 121 Walnut Tree Hill Road, Jim Freeman and Kathy Haverty, had restored the gazebo.

The gazebo had fallen into disrepair, said Ms Haverty, by the time they bought the antique home and property in 2010.

“We replaced a lot of the exterior decorative pieces, some of the supports, and the benches inside of it,” she said. Situated near a small pond, the gazebo has been a pleasant place for small family gatherings, or for drinks and hors d’oeuvres with friends, she said.

The couple had not heard of the Fredericka House, they said in a September 24 interview with The Newtown Bee.

“I thought I had heard [the gazebo] came from St John’s [Episcopal Church, on Washington Avenue],” Ms Haverty said.

They were in contact with Ms Schultz’s grandson, though, and he had provided them with some history of the home and outbuildings. “He told us that Harriet’s daughter was married in the gazebo,” Mr Freeman said. They also recalled that Mr Forbell, in passing one day, had shared some insight about the home and grounds with their daughter.

Eric Schultz, now a resident of New Jersey, remembers going to see the gazebo on the Methodist Church property “in the mid to late 1960s. I was a small child, and I remember the gazebo was in a very dilapidated state. The next thing I knew, Mr Danszar had moved it, built a foundation for it and placed it next to a pond [at my grandmother’s].”

His grandmother, then divorced, owned the Walnut Tree Hill property with her brother, John Graham, he said. Mr Graham had a New York City apartment, at which he spent most of his time, while Harriet Schultz spent more time at the Sandy Hook house.

“They were big travelers, and always hunters of antiques. I think they had always been looking for a gazebo to put on the grounds,” Mr Schultz said, although he was not certain why the gazebo came up for sale or how it actually came into his grandmother’s possession.

“We always joked,” Mr Schultz said, “that it was put on the property so my sisters could get married there in a pretty setting — although only one did.”

How many children may have played in and on the gazebo; how many trysts could have occurred beneath the gracefully sloping roof; how many glasses were lifted in celebration within its latticed walls can only be guessed at. The gazebo has accented the grounds of the Fredericka House, and watched as it fell to the ground. It has fallen into disrepair and been revived, more than once, and traveled down the road, carrying with it always a remnant of Newtown’s history.

It is always interesting, said Mr Freeman and Ms Haverty, to have a little more information about the house they have renovated, and the history of the area.

Sparked by the information that a marriage had once taken place in the gazebo, hosting Ms Haverty’s daughter’s wedding there next summer is on the table.

“I think it could happen,” Mr Freeman said.