Soon after the town of Princeton, Massachusetts, incorporated in 1759, residents of other towns in the central part of the state flocked to the area to establish homesteads and farm the land. One of the new residents of Princeton at this period was Jonas Beaman (1750-1804) who settled here from Lancaster and built one of the most significant and unique farmhouses in town. Jonas built the stone house around 1780 from stones harvested near Mount Wachusett, and his family maintained the farm here. The basement of the house for a time served as a district school, following a fire that destroyed the previous school building. The Late-Georgian style residence features a hipped roof with center chimney, a center entry with transom, six-over-nine sash windows, and stunning site at the edge of a small pond.
Tucked into the hills below Mount Wachusett, the Keyes Homestead in Princeton, Massachusetts, dates to the colonial era, and is part of a well-known local legend. Robert Keyes, his wife Martha, and their young family settled in present-day Princeton in 1751, and built this home to withstand rough New England winters. Within years of the family settling in Princeton, tragedy struck. Legend states that on April 14, 1755, Martha Keyes sent her two older daughters to collect sand from the banks of Wachusett Lake. Unbeknownst to the sisters, little Lucy, just four years old, followed them. She vanished into the woods and was never seen again, despite search parties combing the forest for years. Mr. Keyes was driven to near poverty in his efforts, selling portions of land and even petitioning the government for financial assistance in 1765. Mrs. Keyes is said to have been driven to near insanity, crying her daughter’s name into the woods for years after her disappearance. Two main theories emerged as to what happened to little Lucy. One grim legend says that the Keyes’ mountainside neighbor, Tilly Littlejohn murdered the young girl. According to a 1827 letter now in possession of Cornell University, a man in the New York area thought to be an elderly Tilly Littlejohn confessed on his deathbed to the brutal murder of the little girl whose father he had quarreled with. The man allegedly said that after the murder, he hid the child’s body in a hollowed-out log. The second theory is that a nearby Native American tribe found, captured and fostered the lost little girl. Reports say that many years later, two travelers came across a white woman living among a tribe near the Canadian border who knew little to no English, but recalled once living near what she called “Chusett Hill”. The old Keyes Homestead remains a well-preserved Colonial residence and tells the story of early heartbreak and the difficulty that was early settlement in New England.
In 1769, Abijah Harrington (1743-1821) moved from Weston and settled in present day Princeton, Massachusetts, where he purchased land on Pine Hill and built this Georgian farmhouse soon-after. He built a home 38’x30′ and a barn and farmed here with his family upon the outbreak of the Revolution. Harrington enlisted with his fellow Princeton militiamen, where he was appointed Corporal. After the war, Abijah and his wife, Sarah, raised their seven children and maintained their farm, having a happy life until 1786. It is not clear what plagued the farm, but within a month, six of their children, ranging in age from 15 years to one year old, died. Abijah and Sarah paid for ornate gravestones for their six children and buried them in the spring at the Meetinghouse Cemetery in the center of town. Their one surviving son, Benjamin Harrington, would inherit the family farm and remained here until his death in 1851. In the late 19th century, the farm was purchased by brothers, Joseph and Edward Brewer of Milton, who seemingly operated it as a summer retreat and gentleman’s farm. It was known as Pine Hill Farm and today remains a private home.
The enchanting town of Princeton, Massachusetts, was incorporated in 1759, created out of land that was previously part of nearby Rutland. The town was named after Rev. Thomas Prince, a prominent clergyman, scholar and historian. Known as the Parker Farmhouse, this Georgian-era residence in Princeton dates to 1777, when Thomas Parker (1727-1799) of Lexington, purchased farmland here and began constructing the family homestead soon-after. Thomas resided in the home with his wife, Jane, and their only child, Ebenezer Parker (1750-1839). The Parker’s laid out a family cemetery near the homestead, now known as West Sterling Cemetery, where many generations of the family are buried. Thomas and Ebenezer seem to have run the homestead as a tavern by the late 18th century. The farmhouse remained in the family for generations, and maintains much of its original character.
One of the oldest homes in Marion, Massachusetts is this beautiful gambrel-roofed Cape house on Water Street, backing up to the town’s iconic harbor. The residence dates to at least 1784 constructed seemingly as an inn for sailors who would dock their ships in the harbor just behind the property. It was later acquired by Edward Sherman (1790-1867), a shipwright and carpenter who built schooners at the wharfs in town, becoming Sherman’s Inn. In 1868, his son Edward Franklin Sherman (1821-1907), also a ship carpenter, sold the waterfront property after his father’s death to Andrew A. Harwood, an admiral in the United States Navy, Commodore of the Washington Navy Yard, and through his mother, a great-grandson of Benjamin Franklin! During the early twentieth century, the iconic property became the home of Dr. William McDonald, physician to Franklin D. Roosevelt during the 1920s. Roosevelt sought Dr. McDonald’s medical advice after contracting polio. The Beverly Yacht Club acquired the building in 1955 and have maintained the building ever since. Interestingly, the Beverly Yacht Club was originally named after the town of Beverly, north of Boston, when members broke from the Eastern Yacht Club of Marblehead. For the first 23 years, the club had no fixed location, but eventually settled in Bourne, and then merged with the local Sippican Yacht Club. The Great Hurricane of 1938 destroyed their clubhouse and they were “homeless” for years until moving to Marion into this 1784 home, later expanding it to meet growing needs.
Dating to about 1723, the Danforth-Sexton House on Concord Road in Billerica, Massachusetts, is one of the town’s finest Colonial-era homes and excellently preserved as the home to the Billerica Historical Society. The original owner, Jacob Danforth (1698-1754), was a blacksmith and lived here with his wife, Rebeckah, until his death in 1754. The property was inherited by their son, David, who would sell the house to Rev. Henry Cummings, the fourth pastor of the First Church of Billerica. A series of doctors owned the house in the early 19th century, one of whom likely added the small addition to the side of the main house, which possibly housed a small doctor’s office. The final private owners were William Sexton and his wife, Clara Sexton, who would eventually bequeath the home to the Billerica Historical Society. The house and the now attached barn operate as a house museum with collections documenting the history of the community.
The Captain Benjamin Smith House on South Summer Street in Edgartown, Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, was constructed c.1760 and retains its historical and architectural integrity. Capt. Benjamin Smith (1740-1821) was a military captain who commanded a company of militia on Martha’s Vineyard during the Revolutionary War, after, he served as a County Sheriff and Town Clerk. Captain Smith and his wife, Love (Coffin) Smith, had nine children in this home; with two of their sons becoming sea captains. The property remained a single-family residence until it was purchased in 1938 by the Vineyard Gazette, the first newspaper to be published in Dukes County, beginning in 1846. When the newspaper purchased the building, it constructed a rear addition, seeking to preserve the old home but expand the footprint to increase its operations with editor offices located in the main house and assembling and printing machinery in the addition. The Smith House-Vineyard Gazette Building was later acquired by the Vineyard Trust in 2010 who preserve the building and continue to rent the space to the Gazette. The pre-Revolutionary residence features a five-bay facade, shingle siding, and lovely historic double-hung windows.
Located on Suffield’s idyllic Main Street, the Alexander King House stands as a well-preserved example of a Georgian home in Connecticut. Alexander King (1737-1802) is a prominent figure in Suffield’s history. He was a graduate of Yale, and later practiced medicine in town, as well as serving as Selectman and Town Clerk for almost thirty years. He was also a Justice of the Peace, Representative to the Assembly, participant in agitation against British colonialism, and delegate to the Connecticut Ratifying Convention of 1788, when the state ratified the U.S Constitution. The home is owned and maintained today by the Suffield Historical Society, who operate the home as a house museum with exhibits on the town’s rich history.
Set back from tree-lined Main Street in Suffield, Connecticut, the Phelps-Hatheway House stands as one of the largest, and best-preserved Colonial era homes in New England. The center-chimney residence was built by 1762 by Thomas “Shem” Burbank, where he and his wife, Anna Fitch Burbank, raised nine children. Due to the unstable national economy during and after the American Revolution, the family’s financial situation suffered and they would sell the residence in 1788 to Oliver Phelps. at the beginning of the Revolutionary War, Phelps joined the Continental Army and fought in the Battle of Lexington. He served as Deputy Commissary under George Washington and following the War, he became a prominent businessman and was elected to the Massachusetts Senate in 1785 and served on the Governor’s council in 1786 (Suffield was still a part of Massachusetts at this point). In 1794, Phelps commissioned the addition of a substantial wing designed by Thomas Hayden of Windsor. Under the employ of Hayden, a young Asher Benjamin, later to become one of the most important architects of the Federal period, was one of the workers on the new wing and is believed to have carved the Ionic capitals of the wing’s entryway. Inside, the addition was decorated with imported Parisian wallpaper. When Phelps died, the house was owned by the Hatheway family for a century and is currently open as a house museum, the Phelps-Hatheway House & Garden, administered by Connecticut Landmarks.
In 1775, when news of the Battle of Lexington reached Suffield, Connecticut, Elihu Kent Sr. (1733-1814) at the age of 42, took command of a local militia of 59 men the next day. The militia, along with his son Elihu Kent Jr. (then 16 years old) and a person whom he enslaved, Titus Kent, marched to Springfield, before heading east to Boston. The troops would end up on Long Island and Elihu Kent Jr. was captured by British forces and confined for a long time as a prisoner of war in the old Rhinelander Sugar House in New York. After his return to Suffield, Elihu Kent Jr. had this Georgian home on Main Street built for his family, where he ran an inn and operated a farm.
Ebenezer Gay (1718-1796), the third minister of the First Congregational Church of Suffield, was born in 1718 in Dedham. His father was a farmer and his uncle was the famous minister, Ebenezer Gay of Hingham. Ebenezer graduated from Harvard in 1737, and held his first preaching job three years later. Reverend Gay became a candidate for a pastor in the Suffield Congregation, becoming ordained in 1742. That same year he married his wife, Hannah, and they had this stately Georgian home built adjacent to the town’s church. When he was not traveling to preach in other parishes and visiting family, Gay supervised work on his farm, keeping slaves as was customary for ministers, magistrates, and tavern-keepers. Reverend Ebenezer Gay enslaved at least two people who were later freed by his sons after his death. One of the enslaved was “Titus”, who later was known as “Old Ti“. Titus was freed from enslavement in 1812, but continued to work for Ebenezer Gay Jr., the reverend of the Congregational Church in town, where he worked as a Sexton, janitor, and bell-ringer until his death in 1837. Ebenezer Gay Jr. also ran a school in one room of this home with a library in another. The gambrel roof Georgian mansion features a stunning Connecticut Valley doorway with swan’s neck pediment.
This large, gambrel-roofed Georgian house is located on Pearce Road, a winding road that runs the waterfront of the Cole River that spans between Swansea, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. The house was owned by Captain John Brown (1675-1752) of the wealthy trading and slave-holding Brown Family which the prestigious Ivy League Brown University is named after. While extensive deed research of this home is not known, the property was mentioned in John Brown’s will of 1752 so it dates to at least 1750. It is possible that the house was expanded in the second half of the 18th century to its current form. The property remained in the Brown Family until 1911, and has been lovingly preserved by its successive owners.
One of the earliest extant homes in western Wrentham, Massachusetts, the old Hawes Homestead on Williams Street stands as an important Georgian style farmhouse in what was once a more pastoral part of the community. The house likely dates to the mid-18th century (or earlier) and was possibly built by Daniel Hawes, who farmed the land here. Due to the varied sizes of the upper windows, the residence was most probably a three-bay house with central chimney, and the right-most bay and modern chimney were added later. The residence was later inherited by his son, and later by other heirs before the property sold out of the Hawes family in the mid-19th century.
In 1787, Oliver Druce (1760-1797) married Sarah “Sally” Kollock (1764-1789) and had this large residence built overlooking the Town Common in Wrentham, Massachusetts. The young couple raised one daughter here until Sarah died in 1789 at 25 years old, followed years later by Oliver, who died in 1797 at 37 years old. By the turn of the 19th century, the late-Georgian residence was owned by John Francoeur, a French Huguenot. The Druce-Francoeur House is one of the finest Georgian style residences in Wrentham, which retains its magnificent doorway framed by fluted Ionic pilasters with broken scrolled pediment above.
One of the most historic and architecturally unique houses in Warren, Rhode Island, is this pre-Revolutionary cottage on Main Street, that was modernized in the mid-19th century for later owners. Historians state that the house was built by Jesse Baker (1708-1751), who must have died shortly after its completion. At the time of the British burning of Warren during the Revolution in May 1778, Jesse’s widow resided here and saved the modest cottage from the hot embers of the adjacent burning Baptist Church, parsonage and arsenal by wetting every blanket and sheet in the house and spreading them over the roof of the home. The once modest, gambrel-roofed Georgian cottage, was purchased in 1868 by Dr. Joseph Merchant, a physician and surgeon, who “Victorianized” the house to the eclectic beauty we see today. Dr. Merchant added the projecting two-story corner tower, two-story front entry vestibule with Rundbogenstil tripartite window which reads like a Palladian window, projecting eaves with brackets, and stickwork in the north gambrel roof. The home was later inherited by Dr. Merchant’s daughter, Mary, and her husband, Howard K. DeWolf.
