Category: Colonial

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)”

Rev. John Williams House (1760)

by Dan//Colonial, Deerfield, Houses

In 1877 a house on Deerfield‘s Town Common on the Old Albany Road was moved back to make way for a new main school building constructed by Deerfield Academy (and since demolished). The house was believed at the time to have been the one built in 1707 for Reverend John Williams. Survivor of the 1704 French and Indian Raid on Deerfield and subsequent captivity in Canada, Rev. Williams wrote the book The Redeemed Captive about his experiences. His new house replaced the one destroyed in the raid. The current Williams House was actually built in 1760 on the site of the 1707 house by Rev. John Williams’ son, Elijah Williams, who was a shopkeeper and tavern-owner. When the house was in danger of being torn down in 1877, Deerfield historian George Sheldon wrote a series of articles (collected in the book The Rev. John Williams House, published in 1918) that raised awareness of the home’s importance and helped save it from destruction. Today the house is used by Deerfield Academy as the Elijah Williams Dormitory. The house’s original Connecticut River Valley doorway, crafted in 1760 by Samuel Partridge, a renowned joiner, was removed in 2001 to preserve and display it (the doorway is now in Historic Deerfield‘s Flynt Center of Early New England Life). The current doorway is a reproduction.

Samuel Porter House (1713)

by Dan//Colonial, Hadley, Houses

This is the 600th post for Historic Buildings of Massachusetts! The oldest house in Hadley is the Samuel Porter House at 26 West Street. It was built in 1713 by Samuel Porter (1660-1722), the son of Samuel Porter, an original settler of Hadley. The house is famed for its Connecticut River Valley scroll pedimented doorway, which was probably added to house by Eleazer Porter in about 1761. The house remained in the Porter family until 1868, when it was purchased by Oliver Thayer, a stagecoach driver. It was later in the McQueston family for over a century. A nineteenth-century side porch was later replaced by the current two-level porch on the south side of the house. The property is currently for sale.

David Saxton House (1763)

by Dan//Colonial, Deerfield, Houses, Taverns

The David Saxton House, on Old Main Street in Deerfield, was operated for a time as a tavern and was a meeting place for Whigs (Patriots) during the American Revolution. As recorded in George Sheldon’s A History of Deerfield, Massachusetts, Vol. 2 (1896):

The big dish of tea made in Boston harbor, December 16th, 1773, stimulated the blood of two continents. David Field was in Boston that day, and when he brought the news there was a jollification meeting at David Saxton’s tavern. When the meeting broke up the mellow Whigs woke the echoes of the night by proclaiming about the town the exploits of those men.

Recent dendrochronology testing has identified the construction date of the house as 1763. I believe this house is the one described by George Sheldon in his book entitled The Little Brown House on the Albany Road (1915).

Solomon Cook Tavern (1795)

by Dan//Colonial, Hadley, Houses, Taverns

By 1700 a ferry ran across the Connecticut River between Hadley and Hatfield. According to the National Register of Historic Places Nomination for the Boundary Increase of the Hadley Center Historic District, Solomon Cook operated the ferry crossing and a tavern on the Hadley side of the river. In 1795, Andrew Cook purchased a home lot adjacent to the river in Hadley and erected his house (1 West Street) there around 1800. He operated it as a later version of Cook’s Tavern, also called the Ferryman’s Hotel. Other sources refer to the the building as the Solomon Cook Tavern, named for Solomon Cook (Andrew’s brother?), whose wife was Tryphena Newton Cook. The second floor of the tavern had a ballroom with seats built into the wall. In 2006-2007, the old tavern was restored and put on the market. It was sold, but was for sale again a year later.

Eleazer Hawks House (1714)

by Dan//Colonial, Deerfield, Houses

The house on colonial Deerfield’s Lot 18 was built around 1713-1714 by Eleazer Hawks. It was later owned by the Russell family and, in 1815, was sold to Epaphras Hoyt, who remodeled it, replacing its original center chimney with two smaller ones. When Deerfield’s brick church was going to be built in the 1820s on the site of Hoyt‘s office, he had his building moved to the same lot as his house (it was later moved elsewhere in town). Hoyt used the office in his capacity as postmaster and register of deeds. He was also a historian, who wrote such works as Antiquarian Researches (1824). Hoyt died in 1850 and in 1857 his son, Arthur Wellesley Hoyt, constructed his own grand Italianate house near the center of town. The oldest house standing in Deerfield, the Eleazer Hawks House has been much altered in the Colonial Revival style.

Sackett Tavern (1776)

by Dan//Colonial, Taverns, Westfield

At 1259 Western Avenue in Westfield is Sackett’s Tavern, a landmark of Connecticut River Valley Georgian architecture. It was built around 1776 for Stephen Sackett, who ran the tavern. In 1800 it was sold to Titus Atwater, who operated a posting house, and it remained in the Atwater family until 1900 until it was purchased at auction by Mathew Pitoniak. For a time it was known as the Washington Tavern because it was believed George Washington had slept there. Left vacant for a time, the tavern was purchased and restored by Mr. and Mrs. William A. Fuller in 1962.