Plenty of old Maine homes and camps already host an old-fashioned woodstove — a no-frills potbelly, an ornate parlor stove, or a classic Franklin stove (named for the Founding Father who designed it).

Q: I have an antique parlor stove made by the Richmond Stove Co. of Norwich, Conn. Cast above the stove door are the words "Ivy Franklin," and ivy is cast into much of the stove's surface.

For that was the day Benjamin Franklin is widely believed to have invented the type of stove that bears his name. Franklin's cast-iron creation was designed to fit inside a fireplace, to solve the ...

Joyce E. Chaplin is the James Duncan Phillips professor of early American history at Harvard University and author of the forthcoming “The Franklin Stove: An Unintended American Revolution ...