The following two articles in order of appearance were written by Bill Daley and Pamela Reynolds Jenkins.

A brief history of the buildings at 594 Route 6A

By Bill Daley

There is a collection of small utility buildings that were cobbled together to create what was once the "Christmas Shop". It operated from 1946 to 2013. The current owner, Carol Haley, plans to reopen the shop in the spring of 2019 and wants a historic marker to pay tribute to the enterprise and its original owner, Marise Fawsett. Here is the history of the building.

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Marise Fawsett was born in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin in 1911 at her parents' summer home. She described herself as a debutante and a “spoiled kid". She was raised in Milwaukee but, educated in boarding schools in New England.  Marise attended a two-year college and was so taken with one member of faculty that upon graduation in the early 1930s she moved to Sandwich with a classmate to join the teacher, Mrs. Helen Marot Taylor and her daughter Harriet Marot Taylor. Mrs. Taylor had recently bought a 30 acre farm on Old County Road. It consisted of a historic 1690 farm house without electricity, a barn and outbuildings; all of it purchased for the depression era price of $3,000.  The four women began a communal experience.

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In a 1992 interview Marise described it as a great adventure. None of the women knew anything about bucolic life and Marise said, " We got a cow and we did not know one end from the other.  But the neighbors taught us." The group combined the country life experience with their intellectual interests and "studied all sorts of things - Shakespeare, Plato. They just opened up a new world to me." They also acquired a printing press and did business under "The Old County Road Press". Marise's ability as a printer would serve her well in the future. The 1940 Census shows that Marise's fellow student was no longer living on the farm. However, there were still four women: Mrs. Taylor age 60, her sister Blanche Marot age 71, daughter Harriet Taylor age 33, and Marise age 29. It was a wonderful life until everything changed in the early 1940s. Mrs. Taylor died in 1943; WWII had arrived and the group split up.

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Ms. Fawsett worked in war time assembly lines, first in Boston and later in Connecticut. It was there she met her lifetime partner, Yvonne Rousseau. She had good business skills and they complimented the artistic interests of Marise. She loved her time in Sandwich and the two moved there in 1946 and by the fall of that year they had opened a tiny store at 594 Route 6A which specialized in miniature Christmas items and called it the "Christmas Shop" (not to be confused with The Christmas Tree Shops which came along later). One of the store's hallmarks were note cards that were designed and printed by Ms. Fawsett. She had a love for Beatrix Potter and nature, and Marise featured illustrations of small creatures, especially mice. She printed them in six colors, wrote the verse and drew the illustrations.  It was said that the many mice settling into the old building in the fall were her inspiration for the cards. They were a big seller and Yankee Magazine wrote an article about the store and titled it, " The shop that mice built".

The main building is a mere 10 x 13 feet and was originally a work shed.  Retired archivist, Barbara Gill, believes it originally stood on the 30 acre farm of the Taylors on Old County Road and was moved in the 1940s to the new Route 6A location. David Wheelock, restoration carpenter, has examined it and states that it is a mid 19th century utility building. He also said Roseanna Cullity told him the building was moved in the 1940s.  In some newspaper articles it was described as a cranberry building which is very likely because the Taylor farm also had cranberry bogs according to Barbara Gill. All of this makes sense because of the long-time friendship between Harriet Marot Taylor and Ms. Fawsett and Ms. Rousseau - it seems very likely that Ms. Taylor would have given permission to remove an old work shed to the two young women who were struggling to start a new business. (Mrs. Taylor had died in 1943 and her daughter inherited the property).

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In 1949 Ms. Taylor sold a piece of land "for less than $100" to the two women that was probably part of the 30 acre farm and it was located on what is now Jones Lane (BRD book 729 p. 308). It was here that Marise and Yvonne would build their home and reside there for many decades. 

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