Category: Houses

Dr. Thomas Williams House (1748)

by Dan//Colonial, Deerfield, Federal, Houses

Happy Thanksgiving! Located along the main street of the village of Deerfield is a house, now painted a shade of yellow, which was built in 1748. It was originally the home of Dr. Thomas Williams. He was appointed surgeon to the to the regular and provincial troops by Royal Governor William Shirley and served in King George’s War and the French and Indian War. George Sheldon, in his book, A History of Deerfield Massachusetts (1895), writes that Dr. Williams (b. 1718)

came to Dfd. 1789; lived on No. 9; became a prominent figure as a man of affairs, as well as in his profession; was surgeon in the abortive Can[adian] expedition 1746 and for the line of forts; he left Fort Mass. only two days before its capture in 1746; was surgeon in the regt. of his brother Ephraim, at the battle of Lake George, Sept. 8, 1755, and dressed the wounds of Baron Dieskau, the captured commander of the Fr. army; in the campaign of 1756 he was lieut.-col.; rep 2 yrs; selectman 2; town clerk 17; judge of probate and justice of the court of common pleas; and had an extensive professional practice; d. Sept. 28, 1775.

A slave owner himself, Dr. Williams kept records of the treatment he gave to enslaved Africans and free blacks in Deerfield. Slave owners sometimes paid their debts to the doctor with their slaves’ labor. Upon the death of Dr. Williams, his practice was continued by his apprentice, Dr. Elihu Ashley (1750-1817), a son of Rev. Jonathan Ashley, who lived a few houses down the street from the doctor’s house.

Early in the nineteenth century, the exterior of the house was updated in the Federal style, when the original gambrel roof was removed, the front portico was added, and fanlights (not pictured above) were placed in the gable ends.

A.A. Burdett House (1852)

by Dan//Clinton, Houses, Italianate

The house at 260 Church Street in Clinton was built in 1852 by Oliver Stone, a local contractor, for Henry Kellogg, director of the Clinton Gas Light Company. Alfred A. Burdett, a local druggist, bought the house in 1867. As related in The Spatula, An Illustrated Magazine for Pharmacists, Vol. VIII, No. 10, June 1902:

To Alfred A. Burdett belongs the distinction of having been the longest in business of any man in Clinton, Mass. Mr. Burdett, who recently passed his 75th mile-stone, opened the first drug store in Clinton in 1849, and still retains his connection with the business, which is carried on by his son Oscar A. Burdett at the old stand on High street. His son Henry is likewise a pharmacist, with a store on the same street. Mr. Burdett and his wife observed the 53d anniversary of their marriage not long ago. He has served a term in the Massachusetts Legislature, and has held many positions of trust in his own town, having been selectman, town treasurer and a member of the school committee. Mr. Burdett has carefully preserved the record of his very first day’s business, on Feb. 25, 1849. On that day his total sales were $1.08, divided as follows: candy, 14 cents; cigars, 9 cents; medicines, 31 cents; fancy goods, 44 cents; valentines, 10 cents. The profits were reckoned at 55 cents.

J.D. Bartlett House (1865)

by Dan//Houses, Italianate, Westfield

The Italianate residence at 27 King Street in Westfield was built around 1865. In 1870, J.D. Bartlett is listed as the owner. This may be the same J.D. Bartlett who is mentioned in several sources as a local historian. Vol. 2 of “Our County and its People” A History of Hampden County, Massachusetts (1902) mentions “J. D. Bartlett, of Westfield, who has spent much time in gathering facts for a history of the town,” and Rev. John H. Lockwood, in Vol. 1 of his Westfield and Its Historic Influences (1922), mentions “the historical notes of J. D. Bartlett, gathered with such patience and at such personal cost.”

Sessions House (1710)

by Dan//Colonial, Houses, Northampton

Sessions House is a colonial residence at 109 Elm Street in Northampton that is now used as a Smith College dormitory. It was built around 1710 (or perhaps as early as 1700) by Captain Jonathan Hunt (1665-1738) and was the first house in Northampton to be built outside the early settlement’s protective stockade. The house has a staircase that was originally designed as a secret passageway for the family to hide in during Native American raids. The house passed to the Henshaw family by marriage and was later owned by other families. Eventually, around 1900, it passed to Mrs. Ruth Huntington Sessions, who ran it as off campus housing for Smith College students. Born in Cambridge in 1859, Ruth Huntington moved with her parents to Syracuse, New York when her father, Frederic Dan Huntington, became Episcopal Bishop of Central New York. In 1880, her family sent her to Europe, where she studied piano under Clara Schumann. In 1887 she married Archibald Lowery Sessions and moved with him to New York City. A social activist and writer (her memoir, Sixty Odd: A Personal History, was published in 1936), Sessions (d. 1946) spent her summers at the Porter-Phelps-Huntington House in Hadley, given to her by her father, and her winters in Northampton. She sold the Northampton house to Smith College in 1921. Continue reading “Sessions House (1710)”

John R. Foster House (1882)

by Dan//Clinton, Houses, Stick Style

At 271 Church Street in Clinton is the elaborate Stick Style house, designed by Henry M. Francis and built for John R. Foster in 1882. Foster was a wealthy merchant who owned a chain of clothing stores throughout New England. As related by Andrew E. Ford in his History of the Origin of the Town of Clinton, Massachusetts, 1653-1865 (1896):

John R. Foster was born in Moretown, Vt., November 7, 1834. He began to work in a store at the age of twelve. He was for some time a clerk in Waterbury, Vt. In September, 1856, he went into partnership with W. H. Ashley, in the clothing business, in Clinton. Their store was in the A. H. Pierce Block on Church Street; thence they moved to the Clinton House Hall Block. Ashley remained in Clinton but a few months, then Mr. Foster took the business alone and carried it on until 1870, when he started the clothing stores in Danielsonville, Ct., Willimantic, Ct., and other places, which have proved so profitable to him, and have enabled him to add so much to the beauty of the town through his private residence and public benefactions.

Foster donated a fountain for Clinton’s Central Park in 1890 that was destroyed in the Hurricane of 1938 (a replica was rededicated in 2000). His second wife, Catherine Harlow, was a member of the corporation that formed the Clinton Home for Aged People. In 1900 (or 1909?), the house was purchased by Dr. Walter P. Bowers for the Clinton Home for the Aged, now called The Clinton Home Foundation, Inc.

Dr. Royal S. Warren House (1851)

by Dan//Houses, Italianate, Waltham

The house at 519 Main Street in Waltham was built between 1851 and 1853 by Royal S. Warren.

According to Vol. III of the History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts, with Biographical Sketches of Many of its Pioneers and Prominent Men (1890):

Royal S. Warren, M.D., was born in Alstead, N. H., in 1822, and received his degree from Harvard in 1846. He settled in Waltham in 1847, and commanded a large practice, till, in 1865, he met with a railroad accident from no fault of his. While crossing the Fitchburg Railroad at Moody Street he was run into and terribly injured. He was confined to his house for about a year, and barely escaped with his life. He was permanently disabled. In 1868 and 1869 he represented Waltham in the Legislature. He also served on the School Committee. He removed to Colorado Springs, Colorado, in 1880, where he has since resided.

After Dr. Warren moved in 1880, the house was owned by his in-laws, who rented it. By 1915, the house was acquired by St. Peter’s School and then served as St. Joseph’s Parish Rectory. The parish was closed in 2004.