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asettledcommonwealth

Sep 1, 20192 min read

Hawks-Russell House

Updated: Sep 1, 2019

25 Old Main Street, Deerfield

1714

The house lot, No. 18, was originally granted to John Farrington in 1671 at the beginning of the settlement. His son sold the lot to Isaac Sheldon, Sr., and Eleazer Hawks bought it from him in 1704. In 1713, the town voted that “Deacon Hawks shall make Brick in the street,” probably for his chimney. Dendrochronology shows that the house was built in 1714.

Eleazer Hawks (1655-1727) married in 1689 Judith Smead (1664/5-1718/9) of Northampton, the first marriage recorded in Deerfield. They had ten children. He was a selectman for many years, and deacon of the church.

As a frontier town, Deerfield was on the front line of the Indian Wars. During King Philip’s War, Hawks served as a sergeant under the command of Capt. William Turner. He was involved in the massacre at Peskeompscut (also known as the Battle of Turner’s Falls or the Falls Fight), in what is now Gill, Massachusetts. On May 19, 1676, about 150 militiamen under Capt. Turner ambushed a Native settlement at Peskeompscut which in addition to men of fighting age sheltered women, children, and elders: Turner’s men took no prisoners. (Drake, p 133) Built ten years after the Deerfield Raid, when about forty percent of the town was destroyed, the Hawks-Russell house stands just outside the old palisade.

The next owner of note, Elijah Russell (1765-1811), married Orra Harvey (1774-1862). They were married only eight years before he died, and had no children. Orra was a tailor; that is, she made men’s clothing as well as women’s. Elijah’s father and mother were tailors, and daughter-in-law Orra “became a well-known clothes-maker in that community for many years.” (Buckley, p 120)

The house originally sported the central chimney typical of first period houses, but around 1805 Elijah Russell refashioned it into the more modern two-chimney configuration, presumably opening the center of the house as a passageway. (Sheldon, p 612) Probably already Georgian in appearance, this would have completed the update, though a slight gable-end overhang gives away its years.

Houghton Garrison

204 West Bare Hill Road, Harvard

c.1685

Rear elevation, showing phases of construction, 1931. Image by Harriette Merrifield Forbes, courtesy American Antiquarian Society.

The town of Harvard was set off from Lancaster in 1732. About 90 years before, English colonists had settled a village they called Lancaster near a village of the Nashaway, a band of the Nipmuc. The two villages coexisted side by side for a time, but “the misperceptions that both groups had of one another’s culture made failure and conflict inevitable.” (Jaffee, p 32)

By 1675 the Nashaway had joined the Wampanoag under the leadership of Metacom, or “King Philip” as the English called him, in his war against the English colonists. Lancaster was destroyed in 1676, and later gradually repopulated, with several families occupying the region around Bare Hill and Still River about four miles northeast of the original settlement. The long view from Bare Hill provided safety from surprise. This is the area that broke away from Lancaster to become Harvard.

Built around 1685 between the ravages of King Philip’s War and the onset of King William’s War, the Houghton garrison on Bare Hill could shelter six families and one soldier—a total of twenty-five people—during times of threat, “with their provisions, clothing, and such of their more precious movables as could easily be brought with them.” (Nourse, 38) The last attack came in 1710. (Marvin, 127)

It is not clear who built the house; sources give conflicting information. 1. Ralph Houghton built the garrison with his son James, which was then moved to Bare Hill and added to (Historic Harvard Town, “Ralph Houghton House”); 2. Son James, a carpenter, built the garrison on Bare Hill land given to him by his father Ralph (Crane, 264; Houghton, 91; Nourse, 34); or 3. “constructed by either James Houghton or his father Ralph” (MACRIS).

For a very thorough description of the house’s features and a discussion of its preservation, see Historic Harvard’s “Historic Place of the Month” page here. The garrison house abuts 171 acres of conservation land, the Houghtons’ home fields.

The Old Parsonage

145 Main Street, Malden

1725

The Old Parsonage in earlier days. Image courtesy the Malden Historical Society.

The Parsonage was built in 1725, across from Bell Rock Pasture and the church, after the old parsonage burned. The house was finished on January 5 of that year, for a total cost of £335, 11 shillings, and 5 pence. “The charge of five pounds for ‘Raisen of the house’ is suggestive. Lemons, sugar, and rum may have crept in to swell the cost under that item.” (Corey, p. 483)

The first minister to occupy the Parsonage was Rev. Joseph Emerson (1700-1767), who was the seventh minister of the First Church. He and his wife Mary Moody Emerson were the great-grandparents of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Their learned granddaughter, also named Mary Moody Emerson, was a muse of the Transcendentalist movement.

Rev. Peter Thacher (1752-1802) began his career here, before being called to preach at the Brattle Street Church in Boston. He was a prominent local Revolutionary, and his diary is full of encounters with the public figures of the day. “Dec. 27 [1784]. I was at ye governor’s [i.e. John Hancock]; he gave me a rich damask gown for my wife….” (Register, p. 56)

Adoniram Judson Jr., a pioneering missionary to Burma, was born here in 1788, son of Rev. Adoniram and Abigail Brown Judson. Educated for the ministry at the Andover Theological Seminary, he set sail for India with his wife Ann Hasseltine. Turned away from India, they made their home in Burma, where they are given credit for the preeminence of the Baptist denomination among Christians there.

Cyrus and Darius Cobb were born here in 1834, twin sons of Rev. Sylvanus Cobb, Sr., minister of what had by that time become the First Unitarian Universalist Church. Sylvanus Cobb, Sr. was an abolitionist and temperance activist. (Harris, p. 117) Cyrus and Darius found fame as artists; Cyrus as a sculptor and Darius as a painter.

In 1845, the Parsonage was decommissioned, and sold away from the parish to George H. Wilson. Wilson was an abolitionist, who had signed a petition to the Massachusetts General Court against the rendition of fugitive slaves. The Parsonage was one of four Malden stations on the Underground Railroad. (Russell, p. 60)

This symmetrical five-bay house is an early example of the Georgian style. In the last half-century it has lost a chimney on the north end, its shutters, its 6-over-6 windows, and gained a small addition on the south end.

A Settled Commonwealth

First Period Houses of Massachusetts

Hawks-Russell House

Houghton Garrison

The Old Parsonage