MARGARET HENDERSON FLOYD

Measured Drawings of the Hancock House by John Hubbard Sturgis: A Legacy to the Colonial Revival

ONE of the first great battles for historic preservation was waged over the Hancock House on Beacon Street in Boston in 1863 (Fig. 24). Was the one-hundred-and-twenty-six-year-old stone mansion, home of the first governor of the Commonwealth, to be destroyed or preserved? The matter of the Hancock House came to a head during the Civil War, and with public attention divided between battles on the field and battles in the legislature, historic preservation would appear to have lost the first skirmish. A fire-engine-red six-foot-high auctioneer’s poster (now in the library of the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities) advertised sale of interior details and stone from the Old Hancock House at 4 p.m. on the premises, June 26, 1863.62 Massachusetts mourned the day, wrote Franklin Webster Smith, when a narrow-minded legislature refused to buy and save the home of John Hancock for a gubernatorial mansion.63

Within these events lies an even more fascinating story—that of the staircase from the house, which was preserved and re-used along with numerous other bits and pieces of the fabric, now widely scattered.64 Measured drawings made of this staircase, and in fact of the entire building prior to its demolition, are now in the collections of the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, being the first known full set of measured drawings to have been made of an American house.

The seven known drawings of the Hancock House, executed by the young architect John Hubbard Sturgis (1834–1888) just prior to its demolition in 1863, may well have been part of a larger series. Scaled at ¼″ to a foot are all four elevations (Figs. 25–28) and the full ground and chamber floor plans (Figs. 29 and 30). A final drawing at 1½″ to a foot, the only one of the interior, shows details of the staircase and hall window (Fig. 31). Measured drawings are an essential process in historic preservation.65 In the case of the Hancock House, these staircase drawings were a specific legacy to later houses of the Colonial Revival period of the late nineteenth century.

One of the most extensively documented of all Colonial buildings, the stone mansion of Thomas Hancock, wealthy Boston merchant, had been painstakingly constructed beginning in 1736. Many parts of the house were imported from England: the caps for four pilasters, glass for the windows, wallpaper, and many of the furnishings.

Arthur Gilman of Bryant and Gilman (largest architectural firm in the city) went through the documents concerning the house and wrote up its history for the Atlantic Monthly in 1863.66 By this time the outstanding architectural merits of the building were reinforced by its patriotic and historic associations and its antiquity.

24. Residence of John Hancock, Boston, Mass. Woodcut from Sears Pictorial History of the United States (1848).

[The house] was thought to be a very grand and famous affair in the infant metropolis of New England in the year 1737 . . . [but] it is now the sole relic of the family mansions of the old Town of Boston, as in many respects it has long been the most notable and interesting of them all. . . . We enter the close front-gate from the sunny and bustling promenade of Beacon Street, pass up the worn gray terrace of steps, and in a moment more closes behind us the door that seems to shut us out from the whirl and turmoil and strife of the present, and, almost mysteriously, to transport us to the grave shadows and the dignified silence of the past of American history.67

The central block of the house was a rectangle fifty-six feet in length and thirty-eight feet deep. The walls were of squared granite ashlar from Medford with rusticated quoins and window dressings of Connecticut brownstone ornamenting the symmetrical facade.68 Two large wings, a ballroom to the east and kitchen and offices to the west, were gone by 1863. The date of these wings (Fig. 32) is unknown, but construction took place between 1737 and July of 1789, when Hill illustrated them in an engraving in the Massachusetts Magazine. Sturgis’ measured drawings strongly suggest that these wings were not structurally original to the house. The thickness of the end walls (Fig. 27) indicates that they must have been intended as part of the exterior fabric, while the belt course between stories and at the eaves continues uninterrupted across the east and west elevations (Figs. 29 and 30). The east wing was removed in 1818 and both by 1848 (Fig. 24).

25. South elevation, Hancock house. Measured drawing (1863) by John Hubbard Sturgis. Courtesy Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities.

The double pitched gambrel roof had carved modillions at the cornice, a railing at the top, and three pedimented dormer windows, the central one arched in fine Baroque form. Below, the entrance was approached by a flight of stone steps. Rusticated from sill to eaves, it boasted ornate engaged columns, an ornamented door head with an elaborate balcony and a large window above, complete with broken scroll pediment (Fig. 25).

The plan of the interior was a typical one for a great mid-century house, dominated by a staircase hall bisecting the building from front to back on both floors (Fig. 33). Above the landing was an arched window with deep reveals flanked by classical pilasters. The staircase itself had variously carved and twisted balusters and newel (Fig. 31). The Washington bedroom, 17ʹ7ʺ × 21ʹ10ʺ, was located at the southeastern corner of the second floor, facing on Beacon Street (Fig. 34). The elaborate chimney breast, which jutted into the room from the east, was adorned with fluted Corinthian pilasters, more ornate than those on the stair landing. The great room was richly furnished and architecturally advanced for 1737, with panelling from floor to ceiling.69

26. North elevation, Hancock house. Measured drawing (1863) by John Hubbard Sturgis. Courtesy Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities.

27. East elevation, Hancock house. Measured drawing (1863) by John Hubbard Sturgis. Courtesy Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities.

Following the death of Thomas Hancock in 1764, the property (which included much of the south slope of Beacon Hill) was inherited by his nephew John, first signer of the Declaration of Independence, who lived there as the first governor of Massachusetts. With his death in 1793, financial difficulties concerning the house began. For, despite his popularity and eminence, John Hancock was notorious (particularly to those in contact with him during his tenure as treasurer of Harvard College) as incompetent and inattentive, if not totally dishonest, in financial matters.70 In 1795 the Commonwealth of Massachusetts purchased the pasture just to the east of the house for the site of Charles Bulfinch’s new State House, further reducing the acreage, and by 1863 the estate had fallen onto hard times and taxes were overdue. Plans to extend Hancock Street south from Cambridge Street to Beacon, directly through the site of the house, strongly suggested to many the demolition of the building. Speaking in favor of saving (or relocating) the Hancock House, Arthur Gilman may also have recommended that measured drawings be made when demolition was inescapable. He may well have suggested his young associate John Sturgis for the job.71

28. West elevation, Hancock house. Measured drawing (1863) by John Hubbard Sturgis. Courtesy Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities.

Sturgis made measured drawings of the house and at the auction purchased the staircase. His plans for using it were uncertain, and it was put into storage in Boston. It was still there when in 1866 he sailed for England to remain for four years, leaving his young partner Charles Brigham in charge of his Boston architectural office. But on April 5, 1869, Brigham wrote to England:

29. Ground plan, Hancock house. Measured drawing (1863) by John Hubbard Sturgis. Courtesy Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities.

Hancock staircase—I have advertised it for sale but I cannot answer your question as to its worth inasmuch as it would fetch but little, but for its value historically. Mr. Poland will have to move from his shop on the 15th to make way for the new P. O. Building (which by the way Bryant has to superintend) and we shall have to remove the staircase unless I get a purchaser previous—I shall demand $150—please write me at once of your approval if you think it right—I enclose a drawing of plan of it.72

30. Chamber floor plan, Hancock house. Measured drawing (1863) by John Hubbard Sturgis. Courtesy Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities.

Not hearing from his partner, however, Brigham made the decision to sell the staircase, writing again on May 26:

I did not have time to mention the subject of the Hancock staircase but as the deed was done and could not be retracted I deferred till now to reply to your regrets or rather expressions of fear that I had sold it. I did understand that you would like to dispose of it but had there been time to have received more definite instructions from you I should have delayed any actions till then. As I intimated in my letter of April 5th the shop where it was stored was not torn down until about May 1st and I waited till the last moment. I had had an offer from Mr. Greeley Curtis of $50 and of course refused it. I had gone so far as to have sent a portion of it down to Broad Street where your furniture is stored and was in search of a place to store the more bulky parts which could not be got up to the attic on account of their weight and size when I received a note from him saying that he would give $125 which I at once accepted. If I could have stored it all together I should have let it remain till further news from you, but the only place where I could find a shelter for it was under an open shed. The carpenters are driven to small quarters and I feared that the cost of storage would be too much. I regret to have misunderstood you, but I think it has gone into the possession of those who will appreciate it. Mr Curtis is having it put up in his house at Manchester now building. He could probably have been induced to give more for it but that he had already got his stairs half built before he knew this was for sale which excuses his first paltry offer.73

31. Interior details, staircase and window, Hancock house. Measured drawing (1863) by John Hubbard Sturgis. Courtesy Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities.

32. Hancock house. Detail of fireboard painting of Park Street Church, Boston (c. 1812). Oil on panel 35¾″ × 49½″. Painted for Joseph Allen. Courtesy Bostonian Society.

A picture thus emerges of Sturgis, whatever his reasons, being reluctant to part with the unused staircase. Had he known its location, he would have been even less enthused, for the great house at Manchester-by-the-Sea, of stone, with Flemish gables, was designed by Greeley Curtis (an enthusiastic amateur architect) and Henry Van Brunt of the Boston firm of Ware and Van Brunt.74 Spectacular in siting, high above the ocean, and with an impressive exterior, the house was constricted and fragmented on the interior during the first building campaign of 1869. Because the staircase in the house was already half built, that from the Hancock House was badly cut up and reversed in run in order to fit the existing space (Fig. 33).75 Brigham himself could hardly have been pleased, for he had unwittingly disposed of his senior partner’s property, and worse, Van Brunt (no friend of Brigham’s) would have the credit for utilizing the staircase, no matter how he had botched the job of installation!76

33. Front hall and staircase in the Hancock house. Wood engraving from Ballou’s Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion (March 26, 1859). Courtesy Bostonian Society.

So the Hancock House was demolished and the staircase saved, but more important even than its preservation were the measured drawings which Sturgis made from the staircase in situ. Recently it has been suggested that measured drawings should in fact be termed measuring drawings, for they differ from designs or plans which an architect makes for a projected new building in that they are created after the fact of the edifice.77 A measured drawing is done to scale from an existing structure and requires a rather complex set of calculations with tedious attention to detail. The central point of consideration for any measured drawing is why it is needed in the first place. In the case of the Hancock House, the demolition controversy and historical importance of the structure provided the impetus which had heretofore been missing in America, a young and growing country with few ancient buildings to measure. So until the mid-nineteenth century when a new consciousness of the importance of our Colonial architecture began to become apparent, measured drawings had not really been needed.

34. The Washington Room in the Hancock house. Wood engraving from Ballou’s Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion (March 26, 1859). Courtesy Bostonian Society.

Some idea of the state of the art emerges if we consider the number of architects travelling up and down the east coast sketching Colonial buildings during the 1870’s78 and the numerous books on Colonial architecture published following the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia. Sketches like those of Arthur Little, New England Interiors (Boston, 1878), or Edwin Whitefield, The Homes of Our Forefathers in Boston, Old England and Boston, New England (Boston, 1889), were picturesque endeavors but not measured drawings from which specific details could be reproduced.

Therefore, in 1863, since few American architects were familiar with the process of measured drawings, John Sturgis, who had been trained in England during the 1850’s, was an obvious choice to make those of the Hancock House. He had been the pupil of James K. Colling, renowned as one of England’s finest draughtsmen, who had published numbers of books of measured drawings.79 Although measured drawings were uncommon in America, such was not the case in England. There, within the heightening fever of the Gothic Revival, numerous architects, armed with sketch pads and yardsticks, were examining the moldering ruins of countless country churches and Gothic halls, sadly in need of restoration.80 The middle decades of the nineteenth century had brought a realization of the condition of the national architectural heritage in England, leading ultimately to the founding of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings in 1876 by William Morris.81

A product of this tradition, John Sturgis had returned to Boston only in 1861, less than two years before the demolition of the Hancock House. During the next two decades he was to continue as the prime purveyor of English architectural taste in Boston.82 He imported not only theory and design but specific elements of buildings: terra cotta, tile, wrought iron, and woodwork from London to build great houses for the Boston aristocracy of the late nineteenth century, much as Thomas Hancock had done for his own house over a century before.

By the autumn of 1870, when John Sturgis again returned to Boston to win the competition for the Museum of Fine Arts on Copley Square, the Hancock House staircase was installed at Manchester-by-the-Sea. But Sturgis’ measured drawings remained in his papers. Of special interest is his drawing of the staircase (Fig. 31), which he later would use as the basis for stairs in two houses in Cambridge—early examples of Colonial Revival design.

An overall relationship to the Hancock House is apparent in the exteriors of both the Edward W. Hooper house (1872) at 25 Reservoir Street (Fig. 35) and the Arthur Astor Carey house (1882) at 28 Fayerweather Street (Fig. 37), only a block away.83 Like their model, both houses have gambrel roofs, are essentially rectangular, and are bisected by a central hall with staircase (Figs. 36, 38). In each case, however, the architect has subdivided the hall (which no longer completely bisects the depth of the house), has moved the stair from its position opposite the entrance to one adjacent to it on the main facade, and has added a fireplace to create a Queen Anne Revival living hall.84 The Hooper House, which is earlier by ten years, reflects much exterior detail reminiscent of the 1870’s, freely combined with elements borrowed from the Hancock House. For example, the two over two windows, shed dormers, and mansarded wing suggest its date. Revealed construction with a band of stickwork forms the belt course between the floors and continues uninterrupted across the two-story bay window. The ornate wooden parapets are identical to those in stone then being used by the architect in several other houses in the Back Bay.85 Although the elevation is symmetrical and the appearance of the gambrel roof notable, the composition is treated freely and creatively, one of the most interesting characteristics of early Colonial Revival design.

35. West elevation and plan of attic, E. W. Hooper house (1872), 25 Reservoir Street, Cambridge, by Sturgis and Brigham. Courtesy Mr. Charles Eliot.

36. Plan of ground floor, E. W. Hooper house (1872), 25 Reservoir Street, Cambridge, by Sturgis and Brigham. Courtesy Mr. Charles Eliot.

37. A. A. Carey house (1882), 28 Fayerweather Street, Cambridge, by Sturgis and Brigham. Courtesy Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities.

The later Carey House (1882) is more classical in its ornament, much closer to the original Hancock House, but the architect now manipulates the frame of the building more freely (Fig. 37). The dormer windows, dentilled entrance bay with balcony on carved brackets, and the scrolled pediment above the central window are very specific ornamental components of the eighteenth-century model. To these Sturgis adds a round arched window derived from that on the Hancock House staircase, but now penetrating the main facade adjacent to the entrance. The two-story bay windows seen on the Hooper House, characteristic elements of American post-Civil War design, do not appear in the later Carey House. Instead a studied “colonializing” of the frame has been introduced with a lean-to at the rear and an overhang in the end gable as well, both features associated with seventeenth-century design.

38. Plan of A. A. Carey house (1882), 28 Fayerweather Street, Cambridge, by Sturgis and Brigham. Measured drawing by Susan Maycock Vogel. Courtesy Cambridge Historical Commission.

The interior detailing of both houses is creatively varied but also closely derived from the Hancock House drawings. Each house has a great panelled chimney breast in the parlor based on that in the Washington bedroom of the Hancock House (Figs. 34, 39, 40). The newel post of the Carey House stair (Fig. 41) is a near copy of its model (Fig. 31), while the panelled shutters in the bedroom are additional colonializing elements (Fig. 42).

Certainly, then, in the work of John Sturgis the measured drawings of the Hancock House can be said to have influenced the course of design for new construction in the first quarter-century after the demolition of that great Georgian mansion. But in fact, by 1888, the year of Sturgis’ death, the momentum of influence of the Hancock House was just beginning to accelerate. In the last decade of the nineteenth century it was transformed into far more than a destroyed monument—it had become an institution, one which was to be copied over and over again with varying degrees of faithfulness to the original, and used not only as a model for houses but for public buildings as well.

Only in the years following the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876 had the importance of American Colonial architecture begun to be generally recognized. Robert Swain Peabody (1845–1917), a contemporary of Sturgis, who had been born in New Bedford, had already surfaced as its spokesman, notwithstanding his training at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1868, two years after graduating from Harvard College.86 It was he who was to carry forward the Hancock House legend after Sturgis’ death in 1888. In 1877, writing in the American Architect and Building News, he stated his affinity for Colonial design:

39. Chimney breast (1872), E. W. Hooper house. Photo, author.

There is no revival so little of an affectation on our soil, as that of the beautiful work of Colonial days. Its quiet dignity and quaintness, its cosiness and elegance, always attract us. It is our legitimate field for imitation, and we have much of it to study right in our own neighborhood. In fact, anyone who in summer drives over the ancient turnpike from Hingham to Plymouth will not only pass through a beautiful country full of old homesteads, but will find the sun-flowers still nodding behind the gambrel roofed houses that line the road through Queen Anne’s corner.87

40. Chimney breast (1882), A. A. Carey house. Photo, author.

Twelve years later Peabody’s admiration for the Hingham area was rewarded when he received the commission for a Parish House for the Old Ship Church (Fig. 43), even then a seventeenth-century sacred cow among Colonial structures. The resulting design, linked physically to the ancient meetinghouse on the opposite promontory through the umbilical cord of an underground heating system engineered to run under Main Street, seems to have served as an interim exercise in 1889 for the Massachusetts State Building which he was to erect in Chicago three years later. It was closely based on the features of both the Old Ship Church and the Hancock House

The first Parish House was necessarily a rectangle housing an oblong auditorium, but Peabody’s perspective drawing, now in the collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, appears centralized, reflecting the original seventeenth-century plan of the Old Ship Church. The elevation, dominated by two great intersecting gambrel roofs, is marked at their crossing with a cupola. The double slope of the roof system, the Palladian window, balconied porch, and classical detail clearly evoke the Hancock House, while the swelling profile and cupola echo the famed truss system of the meetinghouse. It was a brilliant and typically free nineteenth-century version of a parish house to “match” the church and appears to have been directly connected to the design which the architect produced three years later for the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago (Fig. 44).

41. Staircase newel post (1882), A. A. Carey house. Photo, author.

42. Bedroom shutters (1882), A. A. Carey house. Photo, author.

Discussing the Massachusetts State Building at the time of the Chicago Exposition, Peabody is specific in expressing his debt to the Hancock House:

Casting about for models that might fitly recall New England surroundings . . . the Old State House and the Hancock Mansion which once stood on Beacon Hill, seemed to offer the best possible types. This Hancock house, with its terraced gardens, was the most picturesque as well as the most architectural of the two buildings. For these reasons it was selected as a model. . . . The valuable quality in the design of the original Hancock house was the air of aristocratic distinction and reserve and dignity that it bore, without losing a homelike and comfortable appearance.88

So by 1893 the Hancock House had moved from its role as a model for houses to a symbolic structure considered also appropriate for public buildings.

The saga of the Hancock House is thus prototypical in historic preservation. It would almost appear that circumstances conspired to maximize its stature after 1863. The immense controversy attending the demolition (not to mention the artifacts distributed through the auction) and the publicity naturally associated with the fame of the owners gained initial attention. The prominent location on Beacon Street adjacent to Bulfinch’s State House (now memorialized with a bronze plaque) kept the site continually in the public eye, and the unique circumstance of Sturgis’ measured drawings and their utilization in his own work drew continuing attention to the design. But those elements were only a prelude to the selection of the Hancock House as model for Pcabody’s Massachusetts State Building at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, for this later structure, seen repeatedly by visitors from all over the world, was more responsible than any other factor for making it the sine qua non as a model for late nineteenth-century buildings in America: the archetype of Colonial Revival design.

43. Old Ship Church Parish House, Hingham, Mass. (1889), by Robert Swain Peabody. Courtesy Massachusetts Historical Society.

44. Massachusetts State Building (1893) by Peabody and Stearns, from Report of the Massachusetts Board of World’s Fair Managers, World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893.

1. This paper is in large part a distillation of two research reports prepared for the Paul Revere Memorial Association which remain in manuscript form: “History of the Property of Paul Revere Memorial Association,” by William Lebovich, 1973; and “The Early History of the Paul Revere House, North Square, Boston,” by this author, 1974. Both reports are heavily documented; copies of both are available for reference at the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities. Material drawn from these reports will not be specifically footnoted here; footnotes will be limited to the identification of the sources of direct quotations and the documentation of material not included in either of the earlier reports. Readers interested in a structural analysis of the Revere House (as opposed to the documentary study summarized here) are referred to two reports prepared for the Paul Revere Memorial Association by Frederic C. Detwiller, Architectural Historian, Consulting Services Group, SPNEA: “Paul Revere Association Properties, 19–31 North Square, Boston, Massachusetts, Architectural-Historical Analysis,” Feb. 1976; and “Paul Revere House, Structure Report,” 2 vols., July 1976. Copies of both are available for study at SPNEA.

2. Joseph Everett Chandler, the architect who restored the house in 1907–1908, speculated on purely physical evidence that the house was built sometime between 1650 and 1680. See his “Notes on the Paul Revere House,” in the Handbook of the Paul Revere Memorial Association (Boston, 1950), p. 18. Later historians, benefiting from documentary research, have usually placed the date between 1676 and 1681. Among the most authoritative of these: Hugh Morrison, Early American Architecture (New York, 1952), pp. 59–62, says c. 1676; while Esther Forbes, Paul Revere and the World He Lived In (Boston, 1942), p. 169, Harold Comer Read, “A Brief History of the Paul Revere Memorial Association and the Paul Revere House,” in the Handbook of the Paul Revere Memorial Association (Boston, 1950), p. 5, and Walter M. Whitehill, Boston: A Topographical History, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, Mass., 1968), p. 15, all say about 1680. Another recognized authority, Fiske Kimball, does not include the Revere House in his Domestic Architecture of the American Colonies and the Early Republic, reprint ed. (New York, 1966), presumably because it failed to meet his rigorous standards for documentation.

3. Forbes and Morrison both suggest John Jeffs as the original owner; Chandler, Read, and Whitehill hazard no guesses.

4. Chandler, in his “Notes,” suggests that the ell predates the main house; Morrison, in Early American Architecture, assumes the ell to have been a later addition; and the staff of SPNEA, in the two reports for the Paul Revere Memorial Association mentioned in note 1, assumed the main house and ell to have been built in one campaign. This was also the consensus reached by the approximately twenty members of the New England Chapter, Society of Architectural Historians, who examined the Revere House during a special meeting held there on Dec. 3, 1974.

5. What information was turned up on the question of original form supports the single-build theory (see note 21 and the section of text to which it pertains for a discussion of this material). A final answer to this question, however, will probably have to await either the discovery of some conclusive structural evidence in the house itself, or the development of a satisfactory dendrochronological sequence for New England, by which means the timbers in the two sections of the house can be accurately dated.

6. Suffolk County Deeds, xiii, 86, Nov. 2, 1681, Turell and Walker to Howard.

7. Increase Mather Family Records, in the John Cotton Bible, Special Collections (Massachusetts Historical Society).

8. Increase Mather Family Records.

9. Increase Mather, “Diary, 1675–6,” Massachusetts Historical Society, Proceedings, 2nd ser., xiii (1900), 373–374.

10. Increase Mather Family Records.

11. Suffolk County Probate Records, New Series, ii, 352, Dec. 12, 1678, will of Nathaniel Blague.

12. “Records of the Second Church,” ms, iii (Massachusetts Historical Society).

13. “Records of the Second Church,” ms, iv.

14. “Records of the Second Church,” ms, iii.

15. Chandler Robbins, A History of the Second Church, or Old North, in Boston . . . (Boston, 1852), and Increase Mather, “Autobiography,” American Antiquarian Society, Proceedings, lxxi, pt. ii (1962), 300–301, 310.

16. Elna Jean Mayo, Mayo Genealogy . . . (Pueblo[?], Colo., 1963), pp. 2–3.

17. The contract for a house of comparable size built for John Williams in the North End in 1678/79 (published in the “Records of the Suffolk County Court, 1671–1680,” pt. ii, Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Collections, xxx [1933], 1125–1126) was taken at £130 “current mony of New England.” Assuming the construction cost of the Revere House to have been roughly similar, that leaves perhaps £150–£170 of Howard’s £300 purchase price to be accounted for by the value of the land and/or the profit of the church. It does not seem that the land alone could have been worth much more than £100–£125. Consider that the Revere House lot, as Howard purchased it in 1681, contained roughly 3000 sq. feet, with 30 feet of frontage on North Square. In comparison: in 1683, Howard purchased an adjoining interior lot containing about 4000 sq. feet with no buildings upon it, for £65 (Suffolk County Deeds, xiii, 84, July 19, 1683, Martin heirs to Howard); and, in 1689, Howard purchased the parcel next north of the Revere House, containing some 2000 sq. feet with a 20-foot frontage, and with a dwelling house with leanto standing upon it, for £110 “current money of New England” (Suffolk County Deeds, xxviii, 182, May 22, 1689, Paine and Woodbry to Howard). The inference I am drawing is that land values on the west side of North Square were not particularly high in the 1680’s; the Second Church seems to have gotten a pretty good price for its house and lot.

18. There is a very slight possibility that this man was lodging with Increase Mather; more probably, he was renting the house next north to Mather’s. See pages 29–33 of my report to the Paul Revere Memorial Association for a thorough discussion of this point.

19. Boston Record Commissioners, First Report: Boston Tax Lists etc., 1674–1694, 2nd ed. (Boston, 1881), pp. 91–133, gives the complete 1687 tax schedules for all eight Shawmut precincts and the two outlying precincts at Muddy River and Rumney Marsh (now Brookline and Chelsea, but then parts of Boston).

20. I included the figures from Muddy River and Rumney Marsh in my calculation of the town-wide average tax figure, but I purposely left out the Precinct 6 figures, as there seems to have been some confusion in those records. (The figures in the “Acres” and the “Houseing, Mills and Wharfs” columns appear to have been reversed in some sections of Precinct 6.) The deletion of the Precinct 6 figures lowered the total number of individuals taxed for buildings by perhaps 150–170, and similarly lowered the total of those taxed 20d. or more by about 20. If these dubious Precinct 6 figures had been included, they would have had a negligible effect on the 7d. average tax-assessed figure, and would have raised the percentage of individuals taxed 20d. or more by about one percentage point.

21. As a check against the possibility that Howard might have bought a rather modest house from the Second Church and then radically enlarged or improved it between 1681 and 1687, an attempt was made to determine which of the thirty-two other individuals assessed for exactly 20d. under the “Houseing, Mills and Wharfs” head in 1687 could be satisfactorily demonstrated to have owned just one dwelling house in the late seventeenth century. An attempt was then made to establish the price that each of these individuals had paid for that specific house and lot. I am reasonably confident that this procedure has succeeded in two instances—those of William Coleman in Precinct 1, and Isaac Walker in Precinct 3. Coleman purchased his house and land for £260 “current money of New England” in 1679 (Suffolk County Deeds, xii, 24, Sept. 29, 1679, Thacher heirs to Coleman), and Walker paid £300 “lawful money of New England” for his in 1675 (Suffolk County Deeds, ix, 187, May 5, 1675, Edwards to Walker). These prices are right in line with the £300 “current money of New England” paid by Howard, and suggest that, in 1687, Howard’s house remained largely as constructed by the Second Church.

22. Fiske Kimball, Domestic Architecture of the American Colonies and of the Early Republic (New York, 1922), pp. 283–284.

23. Ibid., p. 39.

24. John H. Hooper, “The Royall House and Farm,” The Medford Historical Register, iii (1900), 143.

25. Middlesex County Probate Records, 1st ser., docket no. 19545.

26. Samuel Blake, The Blake Family: A Genealogical History of William Blake of Dorchester and His Descendants . . . (Boston, 1857), pp. 15–16.

27. Thomas C. Simonds, History of South Boston (Boston, 1857), pp. 31, 264.

28. James H. Stark, The History of the Old Blake House (Boston: Dorchester Historical Society, 1907).

29. Mrs. George A. French, The Dorchester Historical Society and Its Three Houses (Boston: Dorchester Historical Society, 1960), p. 18.

30. Suffolk County Deeds, vol. 2305, p. 30.

31. Ibid., vol. 2066, p. 303.

32. Suffolk County Probate Records, vol. 650, p. 210.

33. Norfolk County Probate Records, docket no. 20436, inventory dated Feb. 4, 1843.

34. Norfolk County Deeds, vol. 151, p. 113.

35. Ibid., lxxxvi, 167, and lxxxvii, 235.

36. Ibid., xciii, 199.

37. Suffolk County Probate Records, vol. 127, p. 339.

38. Ibid.

39. Norfolk County Deeds, xcvii, 198.

40. Suffolk County Probate Records, lxxii, 33, and lxxiv, 16.

41. Suffolk County Deeds, vol. 143, p. 53.

42. Ibid., vol. 121, p. 143.

43. Suffolk County Probate Records, xli, 451.

44. Ibid., xxi, 555.

45. Ibid., xiv, 192.

46. Samuel Blake, The Blake Family, pp. 12–13.

47. Fourth Report of the Record Commissioners of the City of Boston, 1880, Dorchester Town Records, 2nd ed. (Boston, 1883), p. 162.

48. Samuel Blake, The Blake Family, pp. 15–16.

49. Minutes of the Dorchester Historical Society, ms, i, 44–45, 50–51.

50. “Dorchester’s Settlement Appropriately Celebrated,” Dorchester Beacon, undated clipping (June 1916?) in the collections of the Dorchester Historical Society.

51. Ibid.

52. “Blake House Is Restored,” Boston Herald, Boston, Mass., July 3, 1911.

53. Mr. Peabody’s paper, as presented here, was prepared for publication before his untimely death on March 22, 1977.

54. The Colonial records of Trinity Church are being published at the present time by The Colonial Society of Massachusetts in its regular series of publications. The page proofs of the records are at the printers, and it is, therefore, impossible to give page and volume references to the selections quoted from these records.

55. A summary account in the Church Records entitled “The Cost of the Building of Trinity Church” contains the following entries for 1741:

for Building the Gallery
viz. Jno. Indicott & Will More their Bill wholle Work & Stuff per agreement	[£]1057. 0.0
Will Coffin 31m^o lath nails	17.12.6.
Will Hunstable plaistering 430 yds @1/9
hair and nails 8:11/	46. 3.6.
Thos. Fillebrown 150 bush. Lime & Lath	33.15
Johnson Jackson 50 bush lime @ 2/9	6.17.6.
Cash for Carting £4.15.6 lath & timber 9:4/6	14. 0.0
Willm. Price cutting freeze for Organ loft	6.
Willm. Burbank Carving Capatols	152. 0.0
	[£]1333. 8.0

56. New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xxiv, 55.

57. Charles Shaw, A Topographical and Historical Description of Boston (Boston, 1817), p. 265.

58. “Boston Prints and Printmakers, 1670–1775,” Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Publications, 46 (1973), 43–44.

59. Ibid., pp. 46–49.

60. Samuel G. Drake, The History and Antiquities of the City of Boston (Boston, 1854), opposite p. 654.

61. Phillips Brooks, Trinity Church in The City of Boston 1733–1933 [Historical Sermon] (Boston, 1933), p. 32.

62. Marshall Davidson, American Heritage History of Colonial Antiques (New York, 1967), p. 153. Here the information on the Hancock House is entitled “Lost Landmarks.”

63. Franklin Webster Smith, Designs, Plans and Suggestions for the Aggrandizement of Washington (Washington, 1900, Senate Document No. 209), pp. 37–39. Here Smith, in advocating retention of the White House as the executive mansion, uses the obvious earlier example of the Hancock House demolition.

64. Walter Kendall Watkins, “The Hancock House and Its Builder,” Old-Time New England, xvii (1926–1927), 3–19. Among these are the following: staircase in Greeley Curtis House, Manchester-by-the-Sea; balusters, one from stair and one from roof, two carved capitals in Essex Institute, Salem; larger carved pilaster cap from “Loer Rume” at National Museum, Independence Hall, Philadelphia; modillion from cornice at Massachusetts Historical Society; pendant from staircase, pilaster caps, and additional modillions at SPNEA; front door at the Bostonian Society; balcony at John Hancock Insurance Company, Boston; carved corbel at Martine Cottage, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, home of R. Clipston Sturgis; stone steps at Pinebank, Jamaica Plain, a house designed by John Sturgis in 1869. Many other elements survive as well.

65. For example, architectural measured drawings were the subject of a symposium on November 16, 1973, celebrating the fortieth anniversary of the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), which was established in 1933 using measured drawings as a prime documentary tool.

66. Arthur Gilman, “The Hancock House and Its Founder,” Atlantic Monthly, xi (1863), 692–707. One of the most important architects in Boston, Gilman (1821–1882) had designed the Arlington Street Church in Boston (1859) and laid out the plan for the Back Bay. With his partner J. F. Gridley Bryant he had just designed the Boston City Hall (1862). He left Boston for New York and Washington in 1867.

67. Ibid., pp. 692, 694, 706. This sort of poetic approach to old architecture is not without parallel. See, for example, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The House of the Seven Gables (1851), Chapter I.

68. Gilman, “The Hancock House and Its Founder.” Descriptions of the house used in this article are based on Gilman unless otherwise noted.

69. Watkins, “The Hancock House and Its Builder,” p. 19. Here it is specified that the east wing, or ballroom, was removed to Allen Street in Boston’s West End by 1818. Its exact date of construction is not documented but may well have been shortly after John Hancock inherited the house from his uncle (who died in 1764) just prior to the Revolution. Figure 1 showing the house without wings is a lithograph published in 1848 after a drawing of the house by A. J. Davis, the New York architect, who may have executed it as early as 1827–1828 on his well-known sketching trip to Boston.

70. “Surely I Did Not Run Away with the Property of the College,” Harvard Bulletin, x (June 1973), 72.

71. John Sturgis was in partnership with Bryant and Gilman in Boston 1861–1866. He was also designing independently during this period.

72. Charles Brigham to John Hubbard Sturgis, Letters to England, April 5, 1869, and April 18, 1870, Sturgis Papers, The Boston Athenæum. The Hancock staircase was stored in the shop of one Poland, a Boston mason who did considerable other work for Sturgis and his partner Charles Brigham (1841–1925). One of these jobs was “Pinebank” in Jamaica Plain (1869), where the stone steps from the Hancock House are now located. This suggests Sturgis may also have purchased the steps. The Post Office building referred to here (destroyed in the fire of 1872) was designed by Arthur B. Mullett, then architect of government building. Arthur Gilman collaborated with Mullett on the design of the State War and Navy Building in Washington 1871–1875.

73. John Sturgis was visiting with his father Russell Sturgis of Boston, who had settled permanently in London as senior partner of Baring’s Bank. The enterprising Brigham was from Watertown, Massachusetts, where he continued to live all his life. Capital for the architectural partnership, which lasted 1866–1886, was provided by Sturgis.

74. For information on Van Brunt, a pupil of Richard Morris Hunt, see William A. Coles, ed., Architecture and Society, The Selected Essays of Henry Van Brunt (Cambridge, 1969).

75. Bainbridge Bunting, “The Greeley Curtis House,” in Architecture of H. H. Richardson and His Contemporaries in Boston and Vicinity (Philadelphia, 1972), pp. 46–47.

76. See Sturgis Papers. Brigham’s letters make clear that Henry Van Brunt’s academic orientation annoyed him.

77. Adolf Placzek, Librarian, Avery Architectural Library, Paper delivered at HABS Symposium on Architectural Measured Drawings (Washington, D.C., November 1973).

78. Vincent Scully, The Shingle Style (New Haven, 1955), pp. 19–33.

79. James K. Colling Sketchbooks (London, RIBA Drawings Collection). Also see James K. Colling to Russell Sturgis, London, March 6, 1867 (Sturgis Papers). Here Colling discusses making measured drawings of Russell Sturgis’ home Mount Felix in Surrey (1838) by Sir Charles Barry at John Sturgis’ request.

80. See, for example: Edmund Sharpe, The Rise and Progress of Decorated Window Tracery (London, 1849) or The Seven Periods of Gothic Architecture (London, 1851); Samuel Carter Hall, The Baronial Halls and Picturesque Edifices of England, 2 vols. (London, 1848).

81. Asa Briggs, William Morris: Selected Writings and Designs (Baltimore, 1962), pp. 13–26. Concern for architectural preservation in England was well advanced by 1877, and Morris, artist, designer, Pre-Raphaelite, poet, and novelist, first formalized the movement.

82. Margaret Henderson Floyd, “A Terra Cotta Cornerstone for Copley Square: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1870–1876, by Sturgis and Brigham,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, xxxii (1973), 83–103. Here is further information on Sturgis’ training and on J. K. Colling.

83. Edward W. Hooper was Treasurer of Harvard College and brother-in-law of Henry Adams. Arthur Astor Carey was a grandson of John Jacob Astor and an instructor of English at Harvard. Both men were on the Committee for the Foundation of the Museum of Fine Arts, Copley Square, for which Sturgis was architect. The Cambridge Historical Commission has kindly shared its research with the author on these points.

84. Scully, The Shingle Style, passim. Here the nineteenth-century evolution of the living hall with both staircase and fireplace is extensively documented and the early Colonial Revival discussed.

85. Sturgis used a terra cotta parapet in a similar design on his Charles Joy house, 86 Marlborough Street, Boston (1872), and also on Pinebank, Jamaica Plain (1869).

86. Wheaton A. Holden, “The Peabody Touch: Peabody and Stearns of Boston, 1870–1917,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, xxxii (1973), 114–131.

87. American Architect and Building News, ii (1877), 133–134. Scully, The Shingle Style, p. 42. Peabody’s comment was made famous within the context of Scully’s landmark volume, where it is reproduced under discussion of the Colonial Revival.

88. Report of the Massachusetts Board of World’s Fair Managers, World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago 1893 (Boston, 1894), pp. 31–33.

89. Fiske Kimball, Domestic Architecture of the American Colonies and of the Early Republic (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1922), p. 35.

90. Boston Sunday Herald, July 31, 1949, p. 12.

91. George F. Willison, Saints and Strangers (New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1945), p. 425.

92. Kimball, Domestic Architecture, p. 14.

93. Frank A. Demers, “Progress Report No. 1, Chronological Identification of 17th Century New England Oak Timbers through Tree-Ring Analysis” (August 21, 1968), ms, Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities.

94. Historic Houses in Andover, Massachusetts, Compiled for the Tercentenary Celebration, 1946, house no. 23–ii.

95. Essex County Deeds (North District), Lawrence, Mass., vol. 572, p. 242.

96. Ibid., vol. 1244, p. 313.

97. Alice G. Lapham, The Old Planters of Beverly in Massachusetts . . . (Cambridge, Mass.: The Riverside Press, 1930), p. 12.

98. Essex County Registered Land, Doc. no. 4235 (Certif. of Title, no. 2070).

99. Ibid., Doc. no. 26323 (Certif. of Title, no. 9473).

100. Sidney Perley, “Beverly in 1700, No. 1,” Essex Institute Historical Collections, lv (1919), 88.

101. Ibid.

102. Beverly Town Records, ms, City Clerk, Beverly, Mass., ii (1685–1711), 68.

103. Notes on the Hale House, Beverly, 1903, by Robert Hale Bancroft and Ellen Bancroft, Archives, Hale House Committee, Beverly.

104. Essex County Deeds, vol. 3117, p. 137.

105. Suffolk County Deeds, iv, 313; M. Halsey Thomas, ed., The Diary of Samuel Sewall, 1674–1729 (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, ^c1973), i, 28.

106. A Report of the Record Commissioners of the City of Boston, Containing the Statistics of the United States’ Direct Tax of 1798, as assessed on Boston . . . (Boston, Mass., 1890), pp. 188 (Gibbs Atkins) and 199 (Eliza Phillis).

107. Samuel Adams Drake, Old Landmarks and Historic Personages of Boston (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1906), opp. p. 158.

108. Boston Building Department Records, City Hall, Boston, Mass., Permit no. 127 (J. G. Carlson).

109. Suffolk County Probate Records, vii, 115.

110. Suffolk County Deeds, vol. 178, p. 220.

111. Caleb H. Snow, A History of Boston . . . (Boston, 1825), p. 244. See also, Nathaniel B. Shurtleff, A Topographical and Historical Description of Boston (Boston, Mass., 1871), pp. 649–662.

112. Suffolk County Deeds, xvii, 341.

113. Ibid., xxi, 270; The Boston Globe, Oct. 28, 1931.

114. Suffolk County Deeds, xx, 544; xxiv, 109.

115. Ibid., xxxii, 46; xxviii, 102.

116. M. Halsey Thomas, ed., The Diary of Samuel Sewall, 1674–1729 (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, ^c1973), i, 28.

117. Suffolk County Deeds, xiii, 86.

118. Ibid., vol. 116, p. 128.

119. Ibid., vol. 196, p. 291.

120. A Report of the Record Commissioners of the City of Boston, Containing the Statistics of the United States’ Direct Tax of 1798, as assessed on Boston . . . (Boston, Mass., 1890), p. 201.

121. Suffolk County Deeds, vol. 3221, p. 172. See also, Handbook of the Paul Revere Memorial Association (Boston, Mass.: Printed for the Assoc., 1954), pp. 17–25.

122. Thomas Hutchinson, The History of the Colony of Massachusetts-Bay . . . (Boston, Mass., 1764–1828), i, 349n.

123. Boston city directories.

124. Daily Evening Traveller (Boston, Mass.), July 10, 11, 1860. See also Abbott Lowell Cummings, “The Old Feather Store in Boston,” Old-Time New England, ser. no. 172 (Apr.–June 1958), pp. 85–104.

125. Middlesex County Deeds, ii, 152.

126. The Register Book of the Lands and Houses in the “New Towne” . . . (Cambridge Mass., 1896), p. 167.

127. Middlesex County Probate Records, first ser., docket no. 5172.

128. Middlesex County Deeds, vol. 3694, pp. 333, 335 and 338.

129. See “The Repairs on the Cooper-Austin House,” Old-Time New England, ser. no. 8 (Feb. 1913), pp. 12–18.

130. Middlesex County Registered Land (North District), Lowell, Mass., Land Registration Book, lxiv, 215 (Certif. of Title, no. 12308).

131. “Some Reminiscences of Elizabeth (Prince) Peabody,” The Historical Collections of the Danvers Historical Society, xxv (1937), 37–38.

132. Essex County Deeds, vol. 6173, p. 29.

133. Sidney Perley, “Center of Salem Village in 1700,” The Historical Collections of the Danvers Historical Society, vii (1919), 46.

134. Ibid., p. 47.

135. Essex County Deeds, vol. 1915, p. 180.

136. Ibid., vol. 2779, p. 410.

137. Sidney Perley, “The Plains: Part of Salem in 1700,” The Historical Collections of the Danvers Historical Society, vii (1919), 120.

138. Sidney Perley, “The Plains: Part of Salem in 1700,” The Historical Collections of the Danvers Historical Society, vii (1919), 113.

139. Ibid.

140. Don Gleason Hill, ed., The Early Records of the Town of Dedham, Massachusetts, 1636–1659 . . . (Dedham, Mass., 1892), p. 28; A Plan of Dedham Village, Mass., 1636–1876, published by the Dedham Historical Society (Dedham, Mass., 1883), pp. 3, 4 and 13.

141. Suffolk County Probate Records, v, 112.

142. Suffolk County Deeds, vol. 103, p. 8, and vol. 104, p. 73.

143. Norfolk County Deeds, vol. 975, pp. 602 ff.

144. Alvin Lincoln Jones, Under Colonial Roofs (Boston, Mass., ^c1894), p. 234.

145. Fourth Report of the Record Commissioners of the City of Boston, 1880, Dorchester Town Records, 2nd ed. (Boston, Mass., 1883), p. 162.

146. Plot dated Apr. 22, 1748, ms, Collections, Dorchester Historical Society.

147. Samuel Blake, Blake Family . . . (Boston, Mass., 1857), pp. 15–16.

148. Fourth Report of the Record Commissioners of the City of Boston, 1880, Dorchester Town Records, 2nd ed. (Boston, Mass., 1883), p. 58.

149. Suffolk County Probate Records, xxxvii, 162.

150. Ibid., lxvii, 176 and 174.

151. Suffolk County Deeds, vol. 8205, p. 204.

152. Essex County Deeds, vol. 3577, p. 74.

153. Ibid., vol. 4235, p. 230.

154. Ibid., vol. 5972, p. 412.

155. George Francis Dow, ed., The Probate Records of Essex County, Massachusetts (Salem, Mass.: The Essex Institute, 1916–1920), iii, 63.

156. Essex County Deeds, vol. 5290, p. 327.

157. Ibid., vol. 6128, p. 363.

158. Essex County Deeds, i (Ipswich), 240.

159. Ibid., v (Ipswich), 596.

160. Ipswich Town Records, ms, Town Hall, Ipswich, Mass., iii (1696–1720), 221.

161. Essex County Deeds, xxxiii, 64.

162. Essex County Probate Records, vol. 350, p. 156.

163. John J. Babson, History of the Town of Gloucester . . . (Gloucester, Mass., 1860), p. 230.

164. Essex County Deeds, lxxix, 199.

165. Ibid., vol. 3714, p. 16.

166. Essex County Probate Records, docket no. 3747. (See will of Nathaniel Brown; deed referred to therein not on file.)

167. Essex County Deeds, iii (Ipswich), 68–69.

168. Ibid., iv (Ipswich), 373–374.

169. William Sumner Appleton, “Annual Reports of the Corresponding Secretary . . .,” Old-Time New England, ser. no. 18 (Nov. 1918), p. 29.

170. Notes by William Sumner Appleton on the Brown House, Hamilton, Mass., Sept. 25, 1916, Corr. Files, Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities.

171. Essex County Deeds, iv (Ipswich), 533.

172. Essex County Probate Records, vol. 304, pp. 10 and 14.

173. Essex County Deeds, vol. 2150, p. 327.

174. Suffolk County Probate Records, viii, 24.

175. For correct identification of site with present house see Suffolk County Deeds, xv, 198, and vol. 148, p. 47, and Suffolk County Probate Records, xxv, 450.

176. Plymouth County Deeds, vol. 1429, p. 18.

177. Suffolk County Deeds, x, 83.

178. Suffolk County Probate Records, xiv, 294.

179. Ibid., lxxxiii, 630–632.

180. Ibid., docket no. 21875.

181. C. Edward Egan, Jr., ed., “The Hobart Journal,” New England Historical and Genealogical Register, 121 (1967), 18.

182. Suffolk County Deeds, ii, 161.

183. Ibid., xxi, 341.

184. The title as recorded by Thomas F. Waters, Ipswich in the Massachusetts Bay Colony (Ipswich, Mass.: The Ipswich Historical Society, 1905–1917), i, 358 (Philip Call lot), is incomplete.

185. Essex County Probate Records, docket no. 4528.

186. Essex County Deeds, xxvi, 176.

187. Ibid., xlii, 79.

188. Ibid., vol. 163, p. 117.

189. Essex County Registered Land, Certif. of Title, no. 36484.

190. Essex County Deeds, ii (Ipswich), 128.

191. Essex County Probate Records, vol. 303, pp. 84–85 and 154.

192. [Thomas F. Waters], “Thomas Dudley and Simon and Ann Bradstreet,” Publications of the Ipswich Historical Society, xii (1903), 15.

193. Essex County Deeds, vol. 4298, p. 52.

194. Essex County Deeds, xv, 115.

195. Ibid., vol. 137, p. 212.

196. Thomas F. Waters, “A History of the Old Argilla Road . . . ,” Publications of the Ipswich Historical Society, ix (1900), 17.

197. Essex County Deeds, xi, 216.

198. The Celebration of the Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary . . . of the Town of Ipswich . . . (Boston, 1884), next to frontispiece.

199. Notes by William Sumner Appleton on the Thomas Burnham house, Ipswich, Mass., Sept. 17, 1914, Corr. Files, Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities.

200. Essex County Deeds, vol. 1678, p. 438; see also vol. 1682, p. 515.

201. Ye Olde Burnham House . . . kept by Martha Lucy Murrary (promotional pamphlet, no publisher, no date), unpaged; see also, Thomas F. Waters, “The Old Bay Road . . .,” Publications of the Ipswich Historical Society, xv (1907), 2n.

202. Ibid.

203. Ralph Ladd to author, Feb. 27, 1954, Corr. Files, American Wing, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.

204. Essex County Deeds, vol. 2466, p. 256.

205. Secretary’s Files, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.

206. Essex County Deeds, xi, 92.

207. Ibid., xxiii, 76; xli, 265, and lxxix, 185.

208. Essex County Probate Records, vol. 331, p. 136.

209. Essex County Deeds, lxxxv, 229.

210. Thomas F. Waters, Ipswich in the Massachusetts Bay Colony (Ipswich, Mass.: The Ipswich Historical Society, 1905–1917), i, 482.

211. Essex County Deeds, vol. 5307, p. 173.

212. Thomas F. Waters, Ipswich in the Massachusetts Bay Colony (Ipswich, Mass.: The Ipswich Historical Society, 1905–1917), i, 481.

213. Essex County Deeds, i (Ipswich), 169.

214. Ibid., iv (Ipswich), 501.

215. Essex County Probate Records, docket no. 14024.

216. Essex County Deeds, vol. 1682, pp. 241–242.

217. Ibid., vol. 2857, p. 369.

218. Essex County Deeds, v, 338.

219. Ibid., xliv, 218.

220. Ibid., vol. 4974, p. 196.

221. George A. Schofield, ed., The Ancient Records of the Town of Ipswich. . . (Ipswich, Mass., 1899), unpaged.

222. Ibid.

223. George Francis Dow, ed., Records and Files of the Quarterly Courts of Essex County, Massachusetts (Salem, Mass.: The Essex Institute, 1911–1975), i, 308.

224. Essex County Deeds, xi, 147.

225. Ibid., xxi, 188.

226. Ibid., vol. 5451, p. 705.

227. The title of this house is confused by Thomas F. Waters, Ipswich in the Massachusetts Bay Colony (Ipswich, Mass.: The Ipswich Historical Society, 1905–1917), i, 358 (Cartwright lot).

228. Essex County Probate Records, docket no. 17017.

229. [Thomas F. Waters], “Thomas Dudley and Simon and Ann Bradstreet,” Publications of the Ipswich Historical Society, xii (1903), 5 and 8.

230. Essex County Deeds, xxiv, 236.

231. [Waters], op. cit., p. 10.

232. Essex County Deeds, vol. 5156, p. 235.

233. Incorrectly identified by Thomas F. Waters as having been built by Job Harris before 1751; Ipswich in the Massachusetts Bay Colony (Ipswich, Mass.: The Ipswich Historical Society, 1905–1917), i, 355.

234. Essex County Deeds, iv (Ipswich), 74.

235. Ibid., v (Ipswich), 492.

236. Essex County Probate Records, docket no. 26839.

237. Essex County Deeds, v (Ipswich), 590.

238. Ibid., xvii, 21.

239. Ibid., vol. 2334, p. 585.

240. Essex County Deeds, xvii, 108.

241. Ibid., xxxv, 104–105. See also, Thomas F. Waters, Ipswich in the Massachusetts Bay Colony (Ipswich, Mass.: The Ipswich Historical Society, 1905–1917), i, 389–390.

242. Essex County Deeds, vol. 5384, p. 592.

243. Essex County Deeds, vol. 809, p. 196.

244. Thomas F. Waters, “Jeffrey’s Neck and the way leading thereto . . . ,” Publications of the Ipswich Historical Society, xviii (1912), 4–5, 8–11.

245. See Russell H. Kettell, “The Reconstruction of the Captain Matthew Perkins House . . . ,” Scrapbook, Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities.

246. Ibid.

247. Daniel S. Wendel, in conversation with the author.

248. Essex County Deeds, lxxi, 131.

249. Ibid., lxxii, 269.

250. Thomas F. Waters, Ipswich in the Massachusetts Bay Colony (Ipswich, Mass.: The Ipswich Historical Society, 1905–1917), i, 448.

251. Essex County Deeds, vol. 2583, p. 304.

252. Thomas F. Waters, “The John Whipple House in Ipswich, Mass . . . ,” Publications of the Ipswich Historical Society, xx (1915), 1–2.

253. Essex County Deeds, i (Ipswich), 89.

254. Essex County Probate Records, vol. 304, p. 10.

255. Ibid., vol. 313, p. 458.

256. Essex County Deeds, vol. 1549, p. 6, and vol. 1561, p. 534.

257. Essex County Deeds, iii (Ipswich), 285.

258. Ibid., v (Ipswich), 182.

259. Ibid., ix, 287.

260. Ibid., xv, 109.

261. Essex County Probate Records, vol. 315, p. 307.

262. Essex County Deeds, vol. 2793, p. 246.

263. Harriette M. Forbes, “Some Seventeenth-Century Houses of Middlesex County, Massachusetts,” Old-Time New England, ser. no. 95 (Jan. 1939), pp. 97–99.

264. Middlesex County Deeds, vol. 12800, p. 721.

265. Essex County Deeds, ii, 92.

266. Essex County Deeds, ix, 3.

267. Essex County Probate Records, vol. 319, p. 31.

268. Sidney Perley, “Marblehead in the Year 1700, No. 5,” Essex Institute Historical Collections, xlvii (1911), 68.

269. Essex County Deeds, vol. 2461, p. 585.

270. “Re: House 15 Glover Street, Marblehead,” undated notes by William Sumner Appleton, Corr. Files, Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities.

271. Essex County Deeds, xxii, 210.

272. Norfolk County Deeds, vol. 1604, p. 301.

273. John H. Hooper, “Some Old Medford Houses . . . ,” Medford Historical Register, vii (1904), 49.

274. Joshua Coffin, A Sketch of the History of Newbury [Massachusetts] . . . (Boston, Mass., 1845), p. 391.

275. See James W. Spring, “The Coffin House in Newbury, Massachusetts . . . ,” Old-Time New England, ser. no. 57 (July 1929), pp. 16–18.

276. Ms Collections, Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities.

277. Essex County Deeds, vol. 2798, p. 446.

278. Essex County Deeds, vol. 4094, p. 504.

279. Joshua Coffin, A Sketch of the History of Newbury [Massachusetts] . . . (Boston, Mass., 1845), p. 375.

280. Essex County Deeds, iii (Ipswich), 215, and x, 17.

281. See ibid., xviii, 48; xxxi, 61; and xxxviii, 18; and Essex County Probate Records, docket no. 19766 (inventory).

282. Essex County Deeds, xcv, 192.

283. Ibid., vol. 104, p. 10.

284. William Sumner Appleton, “The Ilsley House,” Old-Time New England, ser. no. 4 (Aug. 1911), p. 10.

285. John J. Currier, “OuId Newbury” . . . (Boston, Mass., 1896), pp. 196–197.

286. Essex County Deeds vol. 194, p. 233.

287. Ibid., vol. 2088, pp. 301 and 306.

288. William Sumner Appleton, “Annual Report of the Corresponding Secretary,” Old-Time New England, ser. no. 14 (May 1916), pp. 5–9.

289. John J. Currier, History of Newburyport, Mass., 1764–1909 (Newburyport, Mass.: Printed for the Author, 1909), ii, 54.

290. Essex County Deeds, xiv, 108.

291. Essex County Probate Records, vol. 316, p. 289.

292. Essex County Deeds, xiv, 107. See also, John J. Currier, “Ould Newbury” . . . (Boston, Mass., 1896), pp. 119 and 142.

293. Essex County Deeds, vol. 167, p. 306.

294. “The Benaiah Titcomb House,” Old-Time New England, ser. no. 4 (Aug. 1911), pp. 15–18; William Sumner Appleton, “Annual Report of the Corresponding Secretary,” Old-Time New England, ser. no. 7 (July 1912), p. 16, and “Annual Reports of the Corresponding Secretary . . . ,” Old-Time New England, ser. no. 18 (Nov. 1918), p. 29.

295. Essex County Deeds, xxix, 94.

296. Essex County Probate Records, docket no. 1788.

297. Essex County Deeds (North District), Lawrence, Mass., vol. 742, p. 359.

298. See Abbott Lowell Cummings, “The Parson Barnard House,” Old-Time New England, ser. no. 166 (Oct.–Dec. 1956), pp. 29–40.

299. See Quincy Patriot Ledger, Oct. 22, 1959, p. 14.

300. M. Halsey Thomas, ed., The Diary of Samuel Sewall, 1674–1729 (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, ^c1973), i, 101.

301. John Marshall, Diary, ms, The Massachusetts Historical Society.

302. Middlesex County Deeds, xii, 162.

303. The Parker Tavern . . . , pamphlet, printed by the Reading Antiquarian Society, 1930, pp. 9–10.

304. Middlesex County Deeds, xxiii, 259.

305. See the Reading Chronicle, June 27, 1930.

306. Allen Chamberlain and Thomas Williams, The Old Castle . . . (Pigeon Cove, Mass.: Village Improvement Soc., 1939), p. 8.

307. Ibid., p. 9.

308. Essex County Deeds, vol. 2663, p. 125.

309. Essex County Deeds, ii, 83.

310. Sidney Perley, “Salem in 1700, No. 16,” The Essex Antiquarian, vii (1904), 114–116.

311. Essex County Deeds, iv, 103.

312. Corwin Family mss, American Antiquarian Society.

313. See Sidney Perley, “Where Roger Williams lived in Salem,” Essex Institute Historical Collections, lii (1916), 97–111.

314. Essex County Probate Records, docket no. 6946.

315. William P. Upham, “An Account of the Dwelling-Houses of Francis Higginson, Samuel Skelton, Roger Williams, and Hugh Peters,” Essex Institute Historical Collections, viii (1866), 258.

316. Collections, Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities.

317. Essex County Deeds, vol. 537, p. 45.

318. Ibid., vol. 3400, p. 437.

319. Ibid., vol. 3585, p. 340.

320. Suffolk County Deeds, i, 56.

321. Essex County Deeds, i, 31.

322. Ibid., xxxi, 95.

323. Essex County Probate Records, docket no. 24147.

324. Essex County Deeds, vol. 104, p. 164, and vol. 105, pp. 36 and 57.

325. Sidney Perley, “Salem in 1700, No. 21,” The Essex Antiquarian, ix (1905), 168.

326. The Diary of William Bentley, D.D. . . . (Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1962), i, 248.

327. Ibid.

328. Ibid., ii, 25–26.

329. Sidney Perley, “Salem in 1700, No. 21,” The Essex Antiquarian, ix (1905), 169.

330. Essex County Deeds, ii, 96–97.

331. Essex County Probate Records, vol. 302, pp. 125–126.

332. Ibid., vol. 312, p. 9.

333. Essex County Deeds, vol. 4943, p. 46.

334. Ibid., vol. 5431, p. 291.

335. Essex County Deeds, xxxiii, 245.

336. Essex County Probate Records, vol. 357, p. 366.

337. Essex County Deeds, xiii, 54. See also, The Essex Antiquarian, ii (1898), 173.

338. Essex County Deeds, iii, 55.

339. Ibid., iv, 152.

340. Essex County Probate Records, docket no. 14656.

341. Essex County Deeds, xciv, 248; xcvi, 22; and vol. 103, p. 236.

342. Ibid., vol. 137, p. 177.

343. Ibid., vol. 5221, p. 117.

344. Essex County Deeds, vi, 76.

345. Ibid., p. 82.

346. Sidney Perley, The History of Salem, Massachusetts (Salem, Mass.: Sidney Perley, 1924–1928), iii, 65–66.

347. Sidney Perley, “Part of Salem in 1700, No. 5,” The Essex Antiquarian, iv (1900), 169.

348. Essex County Deeds, ii, 75.

349. Pickering Family papers, Pickering House, Salem.

350. Essex County Probate Records, vol. 303, p. 208.

351. Pickering Family papers.

352. Ibid.

353. Essex County Deeds, i, 35.

354. Ibid., ii, 55.

355. Essex County Probate Records, docket no. 22069.

356. Ibid., vol. 302, p. 27.

357. Essex County Deeds, xviii, 162.

358. Ibid., vol. 5215, p. 421.

359. Ibid., vol. 5649, p. 629.

360. Sidney Perley, “Part of Salem in 1700, No. 3,” The Essex Antiquarian, iv (1900), 22 (Capt. Manasseh Marston House).

361. Essex County Deeds, iii, 49. See also, Sidney Perley, “Salem in 1700, No. 23,” The Essex Antiquarian, x (1906), 62–65.

362. Essex County Probate Records, vol. 303, pp. 98–99.

363. Ibid., docket no. 28367.

364. Ibid., vol. 328, pp. 326–339.

365. The Diary of William Bentley, D.D. . . . (Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1962), ii, 463.

366. Essex County Deeds, vol. 1109, p. 288.

367. Ibid., vol. 1927, p. 225. See also, Caroline O. Emmerton, The Chronicles of Three Old Houses (Boston, Mass.: Thomas Todd Co., Printers, 1935), pp. 7–39.

368. Essex County Deeds, vol. 3098, p. 361.

369. Essex County Deeds, vii, 14. See also, Barbara M. and Gerald W. R. Ward, “The John Ward House . . . ,” Essex Institute Historical Collections, 110 (1974), 3–32.

370. Essex County Probate Records, vol. 319, pp. 489–490.

371. Suffolk County Deeds, i, 69–71.

372. Essex County Deeds, xi, 240–241; George Francis Dow, ed., Records and Files of the Quarterly Courts of Essex County, Massachusetts (Salem, Mass.: The Essex Institute, 1911–1975), ii, 89, and viii, 201.

373. Massachusetts State Archives, 59/188.

374. Essex County Deeds, iv (Ipswich), 452.

375. Ibid., vi, 98.

376. Ibid., ix, 5.

377. Essex County Probate Records, docket no. 27301.

378. Essex County Deeds, vol. 118, p. 258.

379. Ibid., vol. 157, p. 117.

380. Ibid., vol. 2287, p. 364.

381. Ibid., vol. 3394, p. 535, and vol. 3382, p. 583.

382. Ibid., vol. 5693, p. 519.

383. A Report of the Record Commissioners of the City of Boston, Containing the Boston Records from 1660 to 1701 (Boston, Mass., 1881), p. 120. See also, Abbott Lowell Cummings, “The ‘Scotch’-Boardman House . . . Part I,” Old-Time New England, ser. no. 151 (Jan.–Mar. 1953), pp. 57–73.

384. Suffolk County Deeds, xxiv, 21.

385. Suffolk County Probate Records, xi, 190.

386. Suffolk County Deeds, xxiv, 142–143.

387. Essex County Probate Records, vol. 368, p. 110; Suffolk County Deeds, vol. 218, p. 72.

388. Essex County Deeds, vol. 2258, p. 37.

389. See Abbott Lowell Cummings, “The ‘Scotch’-Boardman House . . . Part II,” Old-Time New England, ser. no. 152 (Apr.–June 1953), pp. 91–102.

390. Middlesex County Deeds, vol. 9868, p. 367.

391. Essex County Deeds, xix, 148.

392. Ibid., xix, 18.

393. Notes by William Sumner Appleton on the Blaney House, Swampscott, Apr. 21, 1914, Corr. Files, Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities.

394. George Francis Dow, ed., Town Records of Topsfield, Massachusetts (Topsfield, Mass.: The Topsfield Historical Society, 1917–1920), i, 44.

395. Donald Macdonald-Millar to Bertram K. Little, Dec. 6, 1958, Corr. Files, Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities.

396. The Diary of William Bentley, D.D. . . . .(Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1962), iv, 287.

397. Essex County Registered Land, Doc. no. 2266 (Certif. of Title, no. 1203).

398. John H. Towne, “Topsfield Houses and Buildings,” The Historical Collections of the Topsfield Historical Society, viii (1902), 22.

399. Essex County Deeds, xv, 257.

400. Essex County Probate Records, docket no. 10156.

401. Essex County Deeds, xxxii, 289.

402. Ibid., vol. 2375, p. 370.

403. William Sumner Appleton, “Annual Report of the Corresponding Secretary,” Old-Time New England, ser. no. 21 (July 1920), 21–22.

404. Essex County Deeds, liv, 13, and lxi, 269.

405. Ibid., xxxiii, 139.

406. Ibid., lxiii, 262.

407. Ibid., vol. 122, p. 13.

408. Ibid., vol. 2609, p. 133.

409. Middlesex County Probate Records, first ser., docket no. 2941.

410. Watertown Records . . . , Prepared for publication by the Historical Society (Watertown, Mass., 1894–1900), ii, 141. See also, Catharine W. Pierce, “The Brownes of Watertown and the date of the Abraham Browne House,” Old-Time New England, ser. no. 98 (Oct. 1939), pp. 67–72.

411. Middlesex County Deeds, xxix, 194.

412. Ibid., vol. 4259, p. 594.

413. Wenham Town Records (Published by the Wenham [Mass.] Historical Society, 1930–1940), i, 39.

414. Essex County Deeds, xli, 184.

415. Wenham Town Records, i, 157.

416. Essex County Deeds, vol. 125, p. 202.

417. Ibid., vol. 2501, p. 501.

418. See William Sumner Appleton, “A Description of Robert McClaflin’s House,” Old-Time New England, ser. no. 44 (Apr. 1926), pp. 157–167.

419. Essex County Deeds, xi, 205.

420. Wenham Town Records (Published by the Wenham [Mass.] Historical Society, 1930–1940), i, 178.

421. Essex County Deeds, liv, 102.

422. Ibid., vol. 178, p. 242.

423. Frank Chouteau Brown, “The Interior Details and Furnishings of the William Haskell Dwelling . . . ,” Pencil Points, xx (1939), 113–128.

424. Essex County Deeds, vol. 3098, pp. 389–391.

425. Second Report of the Record Commissioners of the City of Boston, 1877 (Boston, Mass., 1877), p. 30.

426. Ibid., p. 168.

427. Suffolk County Deeds, xxxiv, 245.

428. Mellen Chamberlain, A Documentary History of Chelsea . . . (Boston, Mass.: Printed for the Massachusetts Historical Society, 1908), i, 193, and plan opposite.

429. Suffolk County Deeds, vol. 841, p. 87.

430. Ibid., vol. 3182, p. 590.

431. Essex County Deeds, ii, 75.

432. Harrison Ellery and Charles P. Bowditch, The Pickering Genealogy . . . (Cambridge, Mass., 1897), i, 22.

433. Essex County Deeds, vol. 144, p. 149.

434. George Francis Dow, ed., “Salem Commoners Records, 1713–1739,” Essex Institute Historical Collections, xxxvi, 176.

435. Collections, The Essex Institute.

436. Pickering Family papers, Pickering House, Salem.

437. George R. Curwen to Henry FitzGilbert Waters, Oct. 26–Nov. 19, 1885, Waters Family papers: Henry FitzGilbert Waters (1833–1913), Corr. Box 2, Folder 3, The Essex Institute.

438. Gloucester Commoners’ Books, ms, City Clerk, Gloucester, Mass., Bk. ii.

439. Essex Quarterly Court Files, Office of the Clerk of the Superior Court for Essex County, Salem, Mass., v, 51.

440. Edward Everett Hale, Jr., ed., Note-Book kept by Thomas Lechford, Esq., Lawyer, in Boston, Massachusetts Bay, from June 27, 1638, to July 29, 1641 (Cambridge, Mass., 1885), pp. 302–303.

441. Minutes of the Council of Massachusetts Bay reveal that license was granted to Thomas Banister on Mar. 20, 1701, “to erect a building of timber and brick” at the south end of Boston. Cecil Headlam, ed., Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, America and West Indies, 1701 (London: Published by His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1910), p. 138.

442. Charles F. Montgomery, “Thomas Banister on the New Sash Windows, Boston, 1701,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, xxiv (1965), 170.

443. Suffolk County Court Records, Office of the Clerk of the Supreme Judicial Court for Suffolk County, Boston, Mass., docket no. 1916.

444. Edward Everett Hale, Jr., ed., Note-Book kept by Thomas Lechford, Esq., Lawyer, in Boston, Massachusetts Bay, from June 27, 1638, to July 29, 1641 (Cambridge, Mass., 1885), pp. 51–57.

445. A Report of the Record Commissioners of the City of Boston, Containing the Records of Boston Selectmen, 1701 to 1715 (Boston, Mass., 1884), pp. 11–12, 17, 23, 28 and 79.

446. Lane Family papers, privately owned.

447. Suffolk County Court Records, Office of the Clerk of the Supreme Judicial Court for Suffolk County, Boston, Mass., docket no. 1833.

448. Unrecorded deeds, etc., 1721–1840, Peabody-Osgood Family papers, The Essex Institute.

449. Sidney Perley, ed., “Boxford Town Records, 1685–1706,” The Historical Collections of the Topsfield Historical Society, v (1899), 101.

450. Essex Quarterly Court Files, Office of the Clerk of the Superior Court for Essex County, Salem, Mass., xxiv, 115.

451. A Report of the Record Commissioners Containing Charlestown Land Records, 1638–1802, 2nd ed. (Boston, Mass., 1883), pp. 171–172.

452. Ibid., pp. 174–175.

453. A Report of the Record Commissioners Containing Charlestown Land Records, 1638–1802, 2nd ed. (Boston, Mass., 1883), pp. 172–173.

454. Charles B. Rice, Proceedings at the Celebration of the Two Hundredth Anniversary of the First Parish at Salem Village, now Danvers, October 8, 1872 . . . (Boston, Mass., 1874), p. 21.

455. Don Gleason Hill, ed., The Early Records of the Town of Dedham, Massachusetts, 1659–1673 . . . (Dedham, Mass., 1894), pp. 165–166.

456. Essex Quarterly Court Files, Office of the Clerk of the Superior Court for Essex County, Salem, Mass., xli, 10.

457. Essex Quarterly Court Files, Office of the Clerk of the Superior Court for Essex County, Salem, Mass., vi, 70–71.

458. Winthrop Papers (Boston, Mass.: The Massachusetts Historical Society, 1929–1947), iv, 11–12. See also Thomas F. Waters, “A History of the Old Argilla Road in Ipswich, Massachusetts,” Publications of the Ipswich Historical Society, ix (1900), 23–29.

459. Franklin P. Rice, ed., First Records of Marlborough, Massachusetts (Worcester, Mass.: Published by Franklin P. Rice, 1909), pp. 12–13.

460. Middlesex County Probate Records, first ser., docket no. 7724.

461. Corwin Family mss, American Antiquarian Society.

462. Jonathan Corwin, Account Book, ms, vol. for 1656–1679, American Antiquarian Society.

463. Jonathan Corwin, Account Book, ms, vol. for 1656–1679, American Antiquarian Society.

464. Essex Quarterly Court Files, Office of the Clerk of the Superior Court for Essex County, Salem, Mass., vi, 85–87.

465. Henry W. Belknap, Trades and Tradesmen of Essex County, Massachusetts . . . (Salem, Mass.: The Essex Institute, 1929), p. 56.

466. Robert W. Lovett, ed., Documents from the Harvard University Archives, 1638–1750 (Boston, Mass.: Published by The Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 1975), p. 22.

467. “Towne Family Papers,” The Historical Collections of the Topsfield Historical Society, xviii (1913), 4–5.