Day: August 29, 2009

Joshua Rice Homestead (1681)

by Dan//Colonial, Houses, Marlborough

Joshua Rice Homestead

The Joshua Rice Homestead, on Elm Street in Marlborough, is a good example of how colonial houses could be expanded over the years. It’s oldest section, on the west, has a center-chimney structure, which gained a saltbox profile with the addition of a lean-to. This may have been built by Joshua Rice around 1681, or perhaps later (but still sometime before 1730), by Joshua’s cousin, Jacob Rice. The east section was added around 1800 and later an ell was constructed connecting the east end to an eighteenth century woodshed. The house remained in the Rice family into the 1870s or 1880s.

Richard Salter Storrs House (1786)

by Dan//Colonial, Houses, Longmeadow

Storrs House 02

Richard Salter Storrs was the second pastor of Longmeadow’s First Congregational Church. Storrs, whose second wife, Sarah Williams, was the granddaughter of the congregation’s first pastor, Rev. Stephen Williams (one of the Deerfield captives of 1704), built his house in Longmeadow in 1786. The house remained in the Storrs family for many years and in the 1860s, Rev. Storrs granddaughter, Lucy Storrs Barber, ran a private girls’ school in the house. His grandson was Richard Salter Storrs III, minister at the Church of the Pilgrims in Brooklyn, New York. In 1907, this Rev. Storrs’ sister, Sarah Williams Storrs, left the family property in Longmeadow for use as a library (a building behind the house was used from 1916). In 1930, the Storrs House was moved to an adjacent site just to the south when a new library building was constructed (completed in 1932). At this time, the home’s original back kitchen ell was removed and not replaced. The Library continues to own the house, but in 1911, the Longmeadow Historical Society (founded in 1899) purchased the home‘s contents and offers tours of the building’s restored interiors.

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