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INVENTORY FORM CONTINUATION SHEET |
Community |
Property |
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Bolton |
310 Green Road |
Massachusetts Historical Commission Massachusetts Archives Building 220 Morrissey Boulevard Boston, Massachusetts 02125 |
Area(s) |
Form No. 158; 373 |
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION BY ANNE FORBES, CONSULTANT TO BOLTON HISTORICAL COMMISSION, APRIL 1998:
ASSESSOR'S PARCEL: 6C-6; -6.1 ACREAGE: 21.42 acres FILM ROLL/NEGATIVE: VI 20-22
*1990'S: ADDRESS CHANGED FROM #302 TO 310 GREEN ROAD
ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION, cont.
Since 1992, this old farm has been reduced in size from 42 to 21.42 acres, 19.52 of which are designated agricultural land under Mass. Ch. 61A. Rolling meadows, pastures, and a venerable orchard extend to the rear, and a tennis court is located northwest of the house. Three late-twentieth-century houses are located across the road, and one to the west.
Although the house is fairly well documented to a construction date of about 1770, and a house is mentioned here in official documents by 1793, the building is of a Federal-period type that is usually found two or three decades later in the Bolton area. It is a two-story, five-by-one-bay house, with a hipped roof and a pair of rear interior chimneys. The windows, which in old photographs appear as 2-over-2-sash, are 12-over-12-sash, with louvered wood shutters. The entry is of a type typical of ca. 1810-30: it has 4-pane sidelights over recessed panels, double pilasters with a molding at their outer edges, and short capitals that rise to a wide frieze, all topped by a projecting, molded crown. A vertical-board storm door presently covers the door. (This doorway is so similar to that at #271 Vaughn Hill Road--Form #263 as to suggest that
they may have been built by the same carpenter.) A second entry in the east end of the house has a paneled door with a 4-light transom above it. Additions to the house include a rear ell, an east side wing, and a second ell extending from the wing.
One major alteration to this house, probably in the twentieth century, was the raising of the northeast rear ell from one to two stories. The east wall of the ell today now has two 8-over-12-sash windows at the second story, and a multi-light picture window at the first, in place of the pair of windows shown in a nineteenth-century photograph. A long two-story wing extends east from what appears to be the extended end of the northeast ell. It has four twentieth-century double casements at the second story, one at the first, a modern door, and a two-car garage with multi-panel and glass doors under the east end. A twentieth-century hip-roofed porch on square posts spans the front of the west end of this wing. Extending east from the end of the wing is another long ell, one story at the front, and built into the hillside to form two
stories at the rear. It has an open woodshed under its west inner end, a four-panel door, then a trio of 6-over-6-sash windows. (Historic photos show what appears to be a long shed-roofed, 7-bay poultry house in this position.)
At least two sheds stand on the property. The major outbuilding is a handsome clapboarded double-ended "New England"-style barn (#373), built into the hill so as to provide a basement story. Its main wagon doors are of the vertical-board rolling type, with a transom over the one on the west end. Nearly abutting the southeast corner of the barn is a modern three-bay open wagon/tractor shed.
HISTORICAL NARRATIVE, cont.
Formerly numbered 302 Green Road, this property is now #310; formerly inventoried as Christmas Farm, current research has resulted in a name change to the Atherton/Jewett House.
Much of the land in this section of Bolton, from today's Green Road to the present Harvard line, was owned by members of the Atherton family long before Bolton was incorporated as a town. In 1726, Capt. Benjamin Atherton (1701-1786) bought a large tract from his brother, James Atherton, Jr., who had received it from their father, James Atherton. (See Form #154--50 Bare Hill Road).
In 1770, having increased the property to over 100 acres, Capt. Benjamin divided out the 33-acre southeast portion of the land for his eldest son, Jonathan, who was married that year. Jonathan Atherton (1729-1793), was among the Bolton Militiamen who marched to the Lexington alarm at the beginning of the Revolution in 1775, and went to New Jersey later in the war. Another occupant of the house, Jonathan's son, Matthew, fought in the Revolution in 1778 when he turned 18.
The inventory of Jonathan Atherton's estate reveals much about what was to be found on a typical Bolton home farm in the early 1790's. He had a pair of oxen and an "old mare", a plow, two pitch forks and a cart to help him with his work. He had three cows and two heifers, and four pigs, various amounts of hay and grains, and a bag of flax seed. He also owned half a cider mill, which was located north of the house near the Harvard border. The house is also an illustration of one known location for an early Bolton school. In the days of school "squadrons", before a true district school system was formed, the schools met in houses in various parts of town. For at least a year before the schoolhouse in the northwest district was completed in 1789-90, the school for this squadron was kept in this house.
Upon Jonathan Atherton's death, with the exception of the prescribed "widow's thirds" that were reserved for his widow, (Mary [Welsh], his second wife), the farm was inherited by his youngest son, Benjamin Atherton (1770-1826). The inheritance was especially timely, as in 1794 Benjamin married Lucretia Hudson, of Harvard. Over the years they added at least twenty more acres to the property.
At first Benjamin Atherton was primarily a farmer, (he had, in fact, been farming for his father from the time he was twenty-one), but he soon opened a store on the property, possibly in a room of the house, or in a small separate building. This is one of Bolton's earliest-known stores outside the center of town, and would have served all the northwest part of town, as well as the adjoining section of Harvard. One of its ledgers, now in the collection of the Bolton Historical Society, shows some of what was sold and how business was conducted in such a store in the early nineteenth century. Benjamin Atherton would take a load of firewood or farm produce to Boston, for instance, and return with a cartload of fish, tea, and spices, or perhaps silks, ribbons, and bonnets to sell to the townspeople.
Benjamin Atherton died suddenly in 1826, three months after the death of his 29-year-old daughter, Lucretia. The farm was sold to Jonathan Jewett, then of Boston. Mr. Jewett (1772-1855) had been born in Rowley and came here to take up farming once again. Upon his death, the farm went to his youngest son, Henry Jewett (1819-1884). Henry and his wife, Mary (Caldwell), may have carried on the farm for several years, but by 1870 the owner is shown as "A. Blood". By 1898 it had been acquired by William Bowers, a Civil War veteran who had served with the Massachusetts 21st Regiment, who named it "Bonheur Farm".
The Bowers family lived here for about 20 years, owning 61 acres at the turn of the century. (The 48-acre Bowers Springs conservation land, once part of the property, was purchased by the town in 1973; the town of Harvard purchased a 43-acre section within its borders at the same time). After, or possibly before, the Bowers' ownership, the farm was under the names of Rice, Cobb, and Wingate. In 1921 it was purchased by the Gore and MacNutt families, after which the property was owned for a time by Loring and Madeline G. Swain. The Swains sold it to the Rev. Raymond A. Heron of Methuen and Boston sometime in the middle of this century. The Rev. Heron, Episcopal Suffragan Bishop of Massachusetts, first saw the property on Christmas day, and subsequently named it "Christmas Farm." At the time he and his wife bought the farm, it
was about 46 acres in size. After he died, his widow sold it to David and Jean Crispen, in 1960.
BIBLIOGRAPHY and/or REFERENCES
Maps and atlases: 1831 (J. Jewett); 1857 (H. Jewett); 1870 (A. Blood); 1898 (W. Bowers). Whitcomb, E. About Bolton, 1988. Bolton street directories (in The Hudson Directory). Bolton vital records and cemetery records.
[X] Recommended for listing in the National Register of Historic Places.
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