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.
Further reading:
Buckley, Kerry Wayne, ed. A Place Called Paradise: Culture and Community in Northampton, Massachusetts. Historic Northampton in association with University of Massachusetts Press, 2004. (books.google.com/books?isbn=1558494855)
Drake, James D. King Philip’s War: Civil War in New England, 1675-1676. University of Massachusetts Press, 1999. (books.google.com/books?isbn=1558492240)
Findlay, Charles V. Allen Family of Vermont. [typescript, no date.] (archive.org/details/allenfamilyofver00find/page/n9)
Miller, Marla R. “Gender, Artisanry, and Craft Tradition in Early New England: The View through the Eye of a Needle.” The William and Mary Quarterly, vol. 60, no. 4, 2003, pp. 743–776. JSTOR. (jstor.org/stable/3491698)
(You can access JSTOR articles through major libraries. In Massachusetts, it only requires a digital Boston Public Library card, which is available to any resident of Massachusetts.)
See also the book-length discussion:
Miller, Marla R. The Needle’s Eye: Women and Work in the Age of Revolution. University of Massachusetts Press, 2006. (books.google.com/books?isbn=1558495452)
Sheldon, George. A History of Deerfield, Massachusetts: the times when the people by whom it was settled, unsettled and resettled, with a special study of the Indian Wars in the Connecticut Valley. Vol. I. Deerfield, MA, 1895. (archive.org/details/historyofdeerfie01shel/page/n5)
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