In the middle of the nineteenth-century the village of North Vassalboro, Maine was a bourgeoning mill town. The North Vassalboro Woolen Manufacturing Company was building and expanding its production facilities, and stores, civic structures, and religious buildings were being constructed at a rapid rate. Mill-owned housing was being erected for the native and immigrant workers newly arriving in town. Among the bustle of activity a Scottish immigrant, William F. Grant, and his family, came to Vassalboro and built their home in a Gothic Revival style theretofore unseen, as far as we know, in the village. With its wide, over-hanging roof, steep dormers, decorative verge board, faux-ashlar siding, moulded window hoods, and skyward pointing finials, the Grants? home utilized a stylistic vocabulary that was distinctly non-urban and non-industrial. In addition, the eye-catching house, which during the 19th century was painted in light tones with darker hued trim, provided a canvas upon which Grant?s skills as a house painter would have been evident, and provided the new-comer with an immediate advertising medium. Today, the distinctive stylistic details of the Grant house remain as a counterpoint to the generally vernacular buildings in the village, and symbolizes in part the variety of cultural influences that found their way to Maine?s industrializing landscape in the 19th century.