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.