Stagecoach Inn (Shelburne, Vermont)

A former captain in the United States Militia, Barnes had moved with his family to Charlotte in 1780 and established the inn and a trading post on opposite sides of the main stage route from Montreal to southern New England.

Built on a Georgian plan, the Stagecoach Inn, which town residents referred to as the Tavern Stand, possesses regularly spaced windows and two central, side-lit doors that are distinctive elements of the vernacular Federal style popular in the eighteenth century.

Museum contractors removed the dividing walls in the second-story ballroom, returning it to its former dimensions; they rebuilt ten fireplaces, two brick ovens, and two ham-smoking chambers; applied paneling and plaster finishes that approximated those found in New England in the late 18th century; and fashioned replacement window casings and chair rails with antique carpenter's planes.

Inspired by the popular Civil War-era song "Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines", Thomas White, Robb's partner of many years, created the caricature as a tobacconist figure.

During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, trade signs advertised the variety of goods and services that craftspeople, merchants, and inn and tavern keepers offered.

Farmers would mount a representation of a cow, pig, or rooster on top of their barns to symbolize their trade, while horse breeders might cap their stables with a finely crafted racehorse.

Early weathervanes were often handmade, and the museum's wooden mermaid, carved by Warren Gould Roby of Wayland, Massachusetts, in about 1850, is a fine example of such hand-carved figures.

Other handcrafted weathervanes include a Native American archer, a streamlined goose in flight, and a wooden rooster that originally stood on a barn in Bedford, Massachusetts.

Shelburne's collection includes finished copper vanes, cast-iron molds, and a unique wooden pattern for a Lady Liberty weathervane.