Stephen Fitch built a house in Windham, Connecticut in 1737. The house was later expanded in two or three stages, when an extended ell was added to the rear. In 1939, the Fitch House was acquired by Old Sturbridge Village and moved to Sturbridge the following year to become the museum’s first exhibit building. Today, the house is furnished with reproductions that visitors can touch. It is presented as the home of a successful country printer.
The facade of the Ireland-Emery House, at 131 Federal Street in Salem, does not face the street but instead fronts a yard on the west side. The house, which was built around 1797, is named for Jonathan Ireland, a blacksmith for whom it was erected, and Samuel Emery, a nautical instrument dealer and compass maker, active in Salem between 1809 and 1868, who acquired the house in 1828. The bay window above the front door is a later addition.
The William T. Pickering House, at 343 Essex Street, at the corner of Botts Court, in Salem, was built before 1736. It was later owned by members of the Botts family.
The Scott House in Amherst, built in 1793, is the oldest building operated by Amherst College. Built as a tavern, it has been owned by the College since 1924. It was recently renovated, with the interior space being redesigned and modernized. An earlier rear addition to the house and old outbuildings were demolished and the vegetation, which concealed the house from the road, was also removed.
Solomon Boltwood built the house at 243 Amity Street in Amherst around 1745. His brother, Samuel, built the Boltwood-Stockbridge House on the UMASS campus. Solomon Boltwood was the grandfather of Elijah Boltwood, proprietor of the famous Boltwood Tavern.
The dating for the house at 257 Main Street in Amherst, across the street from the Dickinson Homestead, is a little confusing based on the sources immediately available to me. The 2005 guidebook to the Dickinson Historic District describes it as the Cyrus Kingman House, built in the 1850s. Cyrus Kingman was a businessman who established himself in Pelham and then moved to Amherst in 1850, when he purchased the general store that stood where the Town Hall is today. Kingman’s daughters, Martha and Ellen Mary, school friends of Emily Dickinson, died within two weeks of each other in 1851. The surviving daughter, Jane Juliette., and Kingman himself died in 1854. His widow was still living in the house in the early 1870s. Zillow.com has a date for the house of 1878. While Zillow dates are not always accurate, the 1870s seems a more likely period for a house built in the Stick style. Today the house is a bed & breakfast called the Amherst Inn.
The Federal-style house at 317 South Pleasant Street in Amherst was built in 1820. On December 7, 1827, when the house was owned by Rev. Stephen S. Nelson, it was here that the first meeting of the Amherst branch of the First Baptist Church in New Salem was held (Rev. Nelson served as moderator of the meeting). After later becoming a branch of the Baptist Church in Northampton, it became the First Baptist Church in Amherst in 1832. From 1831-1931 the house was owned by the Snell family. Ebeneezer Snell was a mathematics professor at Amherst College who kept the earliest continuous weather records in the world. This was continued by his daughter and by the College today. The widow’s walk on the roof of the house was added in 1854.
