SEARSMONT – The Joseph Moody Farm has been entered in the National Register of Historic Places, according to Earle G. Shettleworth Jr., director of the Maine Historic Preservation Commission, whose staff prepared the nomination.

This designation indicates that the property has been documented, evaluated and considered worthy of preservation and protection as part of the nation’s cultural heritage.

The Joseph Moody Farm at Bickford’s Corner contains a 11/2-story, high-posted, Federal-style Cape. The house, built circa 1829, is surrounded by fields and orchards, barns, ponds and outbuildings, all connected with almost 200 years of family farming.

The farm was built on land purchased from Israel Thorndike, David Sears and William Prescott Jr., three of the creditors who had obtained all of the unsold land of Henry Knox’s Waldo Patent after his bankruptcy earlier in the century.

The architecture of the Joseph Moody Farm represents the wave of settlement that brought families from southern New England into Maine after it gained statehood, and who reproduced in their new homes the Federal style that had signified refinement, accomplishment and success in their home towns.