Moses Eames built the Greek Revival house at 4 Pleasant Street in South Natick in the 1830s, on land he had acquired in 1831. Eames later built a larger home next door on Pleasant Street in 1839. In 1845, he sold the earlier house to Lucy Morse and ten years later it was purchased by Aaron Wheeler. It remained in the Wheeler family until about 1918 and has since had other owners. The house briefly served as a restaurant in the late-1950s.
After his first home in Longmeadow burned, Calvin Cooley built a new brick house on the same site, 418 Longmeadow Street, in 1827. Calvin Cooley’s eldest son, James, became a lawyer and in 1826 was sent by Henry Clay, president John Quincy Adams’ Secretary of State, to Lima, Peru as charge d’affaires, where he died several months later. Another son, Alford Cooley, married Caroline Bliss Saxton Cooley in 1833. Their daughter, Caroline L. Cooley Eveleth, later lived in the house with her husband. The Cooley-Eveleth House has a rear wing added in the 1930s.
Built perhaps as early as 1739, the Beckford-Whipple House, at 2 Andover Street in Salem, was later significantly altered. In 1739, John and Rebecca Beckford deeded the house to their son, John Jr., who next left the house to his son Ebenezer in 1788. Ebenezer was probably the owner (1788-1816) who enlarged the house around 1804. The Whipple family owned the house for about a century starting in 1826. The present front facade and side porch are turn-of-the-century modifications in the Colonial Revival style.
The Ambrose Gale House, 17 Franklin Street in Marblehead, is considered to be the oldest surviving house in town. The house was built around 1663 by Ambrose Gale (1631-1708), a fisherman who served as first selectman, testified in the Salem Witch Trials, and owned land that later became Fort Sewall. There are other properties in Marblehead associated with Ambrose Gale, including a c.1700 house on Wadden Court. The house on Franklin Street now has sash windows, instead of the original casement windows.
The Mason-Roberts-Colby House is a Georgian Colonial residence at the corner of Federal Street and Federal Court in Salem. The house has an attached Beverley jog to the right of the front facade. Built in 1768 for Capt. Jonathan Mason, the house was originally located where the Forrester-Peabody House (1818) stands today on Washington Square North, but it was moved by a team of sixty oxen to make way for the newer building. The move was supervised by William Roberts, a mason, who would later build the East India Marine Hall and St. Peter’s Church. His descendants then owned the home for many years.
Lewis Hayden escaped from slavery in Kentucky in 1844 on the Underground Railroad and later settled in Boston, where he owned a used clothing store and became a leading abolitionist. He moved into his house, built in 1833 at 66 Philips Street (then called Southac Street) on Boston’s Beacon Hill, in 1849. With the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, Hayden and his wife Harriet hid fugitive slaves in their home. In 1853, abolitionist Francis Jackson purchased the house, which Hayden occupied as a tenant, to help protect him from harassment for his Underground Railroad activities. Jackson’s estate sold the house to Hayden’s wife in 1865. This important house is a stop on the Black Heritage Trail.
In 1782, Salem Federalists erected the Assembly House, also known as the Cotting-Smith Assembly House, at 138 Federal Street to serve as a gathering place for social and cultural events. Lafayette and Washington were both entertained there in the 1780s. The original building was most likely quite plain, but it was significantly altered around 1798 by Samuel McIntire, who added elaborate Federal style ornamentation to the front facade. By that time, the building had ceased to be used as an assembly place and was converted into a residence. Jonathan Waldo, an original funder of the Assembly House, had become sole owner in 1796 and sold it to Samuel Putnam, a local judge, two years later. Around that time, Waldo and his partners, William Stearns and Col. William Pickering, built the Stearns Block on Washington Street, which included their own new assembly space called Washington Hall, intended to supercede the Assembly House. In 1919, the Old Assembly House was acquired by Joseph Newton Smith, whose daughter, Mary Silver Smith, gave the house to the Essex Institute, now the Peabody Essex Museum, in 1965. Continue reading “Assembly House, Salem (1782)”
