Founding Father's largely unchanged home is for sale

Founding Father's largely unchanged home is for sale
Click on a photo to go to a slideshow with more details.
Click on a photo to go to a slideshow with more details.
The commode and tub. This was the only bathroom for about two centuries.
The commode and tub. This was the only bathroom for about two centuries.

Here's your chance to live like one of America's Founding Fathers.

The 1774 New Hampshire home of Josiah Bartlett -- the second signatory of the Declaration of Independence, after John Hancock -- is on the market for the first time in history. It's been in his family the whole time, through seven generations.

Sheltering the Kingston house is a linden tree that Bartlett brought back as a sapling from Philadelphia in 1776, after New Hampshire and the 12 other colonies united to declare their independence from Britain. Upstairs you'll find his luxurious-for-the-time in-house bathroom: a tin tub with a hand pump and the "one-holer" commode. That was the only bathroom the house had up until 1951, when the family installed electricity and running water.

The house does have some updates. The kitchen, for instance, was renovated in the mid-19th century.

The owner, Bartlett's great-great-great-great-granddaughter Ruth Albert, grew up in the house but has no descendants. She tried to find relatives who could care for the home, she told the New Hampshire Union Leader: "A lot of my cousins loved this house, but they aren’t able to relocate to New Hampshire right now."

And maintaining it is "a huge responsibility," she acknowledged; she and her husband "worked very, very hard to keep this property up." Now they've had their fill of New Hampshire winters and want to move to Florida. She does plan to keep a smaller house on adjacent land, she told WMUR-TV, the local ABC affiliate.

She and her husband added a bathroom upstairs, according to the Associated Press. That brought the 4,700-square-foot house to 2 bathrooms, along with its 4 bedrooms. They're asking $850,000 with 18 acres of land and 1,200 feet of Greenwood Pond water frontage, or $600,000 with just 8 acres.

Click here or on an image for a slideshow with more details about the historic home.