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INVENTORY FORM CONTINUATION SHEET Community Property
Bolton 392 Main Street
Baker/Sawyer House
Massachusetts Historical Commission
Massachusetts Archives Building
220 Morrissey Boulevard
Boston, Massachusetts 02125 Area(s)
Form No.
34; 215
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION BY ANNE FORBES, CONSULTANT TO BOLTON HISTORICAL COMMISSION, APRIL 1998:
ASSESSOR'S PARCEL: 4D-23 ACREAGE: 2.4 acres FILM ROLL/NEGATIVE: XI: 9, 11, 13
ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION, cont.
One reason for the somewhat off-balance appearance of this house when viewed from Main Street is that the rear of the house faces north toward Main, and, true to most eighteenth-century farmhouses, the main front facade faces south. Considered in that fashion, the Baker House is still a good example of a mid-eighteenth-century two-room-deep, 2 1/2-story, five- by two-bay dwelling. If the traditional date of ca. 1750 is accurate, then the house would have been built with a massive center chimney; today, however, there are three chimneys, a narrow one just west of the center of the ridge, one on the ridge at the west end, and another behind the ridge at the east end. A one-story ell with a large exterior-mounted vertical-board sliding door extends east from the northeast rear corner of the main house. Projecting toward Main Street from the
northeast corner of the ell is a mid-twentieth-century two-car garage with a pair of multi-panel overhead doors.
Most of the windows of the house are large 12-over-12-sash, some with slightly projecting surrounds trimmed with an edge molding. One 6-over-9-sash is positioned in the northeast corner of the east wall, second story, and a cluster of small mid-twentieth-century 6-over-6-sash windows is located on the north wall of the ell and the northeast rear first-story wall of the main house. The main, south-facing entry has a 6-panel door in a somewhat rustic-looking surround of very wide, flat boards. The north center entry has a quasi-Greek Revival twentieth-century surround and a modern 6-panel door. The house trim includes a molded, boxed cornice at the main roof line with a large bed molding at the top of the wall.
The house is clapboarded, with an asphalt-shingle roof and a fieldstone foundation. A photograph taken in 1938 shows that the north entry had a shed-roofed porch at that time.
The 12.2 acres that surrounded this house in 1980 have been reduced to 2.4 acres. For the present, however, the building retains much of its rural setting, with woods to the east and northeast across the road, and a handsome, though deteriorated, gable-end "New England" barn (#215) standing just southeast of the house. Probably dating to the mid-nineteenth century, the barn stands on a brick and fieldstone foundation, built into the hill to face its main wagon door to the west, and with a basement story under the east end. The barn is sheathed with vertical board on three sides, and shingled on its north side. Although many of its 6-over-6-sash windows are broken, the barn retains its louvered cupola and its two-part interior sliding door with large transom above it. Abutting the east end of the barn's north wall is a
shed-roofed extension, also on a brick foundation, clad in flushboard on its west end, shingled on its north wall, and clapboarded on its east end. Its roof is currently in a state of collapse.
HISTORICAL NARRATIVE, cont.
Formerly referred to as the Baker/Estabrook Place, current research has resulted in a change of historic name to the Baker/Sawyer House. (Former address: 392 Great Road).
This house is associated with the first known tannery in Bolton, established in about 1750, as well as with the mill complex that operated for well over a century north of Main Street. Because of the water-intensive activities involved in tanning hides, early tanyards were located near ponds or streams. Samuel Baker, who bought land here adjoining West's Pond from John Osborne, located his yard, and hence his house, at an ideal location that had both.
West's Pond is located just across Long Hill Road to the south, and the brook which flows northeast from it into the Great Brook traversed this property in close proximity to the house and barn. Capt. Baker (who probably obtained his military title during the French and Indian Wars of the 1750's-1760's) also built a sawmill further to the north, on the Great Brook itself.
Capt. Baker, (later Judge Baker; d. 1795), and his wife, Susannah, were married in about 1750. Between 1751 and 1764 they had either six or seven children, all of whom would have been born in this house. In 1765, however, they moved to the territory that later became the town of Berlin, and sold the property to Samuel Moore. He in turn sold it that same year to the owner of the land to the east, John Pierce. He was also a tanner, and may have had his own tanyard even before his purchase. He operated the former Baker tannery for about seven years, selling it, with thirty acres,to John and Nathaniel Potter in 1772. Although they were housewrights, they, too may have operated the tanyard for a while, and possibly the sawmill as well. In 1791 they sold the property, including the house, tanyard, and water rights on the brook and stream, to
Benjamin Sawyer.
Benjamin Sawyer (1758-1844), like several members of his family (see Form E: Century Mills,) was a miller rather than a tanner, and undoubtedly bought the land and adjacent water rights for its milling potential. He operated the sawmill on the Great Brook, and put up a gristmill on the stream that flowed into it from West's Pond. (The gristmill is shown on the maps of 1831 and 1870, just north of the newly laid-out section of the Great Road between Long Hill and Meadow Roads. The map of 1870 also clearly shows a cart path that led almost straight north from the Baker/Sawyer House to the sawmill). In 1781 he had married Rebeckah Houghton (1760-1832), daughter of Jonas and Rebeckah Houghton of Vaughn Hill Road. They had twelve children, at least three of whom died as infants. The others would have been raised in this house. Benjamin Sawyer
fought in the Revolution, and was an active member of the Bolton church, being one of four choristers--all prominent men--designated in 1795 to lead the singing. He appears to have overseen several enterprises in his mill buildings, some of them operated by others under lease arrangements. One of them was a small wire factory established in 1813. This may have been spurred by the embargoes associated with the War of 1812, which prevented many goods, including wire, from being imported. Card wire for textile manufacturing, in particular, had been largely imported until 1810. It is not known how long the wire-drawing operation that was to be set up "in the old mill house" on his property lasted, but a business agreement in the collection of the Bolton Historical Society shows that Benjamin's sons John and Benjamin, Jr. were to be closely involved in the manufacturing.
In all, three generations of Sawyers operated the mills here. Benjamin and Rebeckah's son John built his own house at 401 Main Street (see Form #64) in about 1827, the year that his father conveyed to him 35 acres on the north side of the new section of road, with the mills and all the water rights connected with them. After him they were operated for several years by his son, John Francis Sawyer, who died in 1882. One mill eventually fell into disrepair and was removed; the other, after having been bought by James G. Dow in the 1880's, burned down before 1894.
In 1852, the property around this house had been reduced to about 13.5 acres, and, while retaining the mill properties and water rights, the Sawyers sold the house, barn, and land around them to Amos Bryant. Amos Bryant (1819-1897) was a farmer, and in addition to this property owned several other adjoining tracts in the vicinity, some of which were eventually sold to the owners of 96 Long Hill Road (see Form #149). His land extended southwest to West's Pond, and he may have owned a piece adjoining Little Pond, as well.
Amos Bryant had two wives, both named Sarah, who predeceased him. When he died, he was survived by two married daughters and a son, Willie, who lived at the Daniel Sawyer House (see Form #31, 426 Main Street) before relocating to Northborough. Willie Bryant had apparently been the principal farmer for his father for some years, and had developed a side business in cutting and selling ice from the ponds during the 1880's. In 1898, however, as administrator of his father's estate, in order to pay debts, he sold the parcel with the house, including land that stretched to West's Pond, to a relative, Lizzie Bryant, who immediately sold it, still with 13-14 acres, to Elbridge G. and Jane Willard. In 1916 the Willards sold the same piece to Richard G. and Pierina Verzone.
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The siting of this house with its back to the main road is a reminder that this section of the Great Road was not built until the 1820's, and that the route through this part of town, (part of the north branch of the Bay Path--later improved into the Lancaster Road), came east from Wataquadoc Hill over the line of today's Main Street/Route 117, then swung southeast down Long Hill Road, and east up Meadow Road to rejoin Route 117 at the Whitcomb farm (see Area Form C: Bolton Spring Farm).
BIBLIOGRAPHY and/or REFERENCES
Maps and atlases: 1831 (B. Sawyer); 1857 (A. Bryant); 1870 (A. Bryant); 1898 (A. Bryant est.)
Whitcomb, E. About Bolton, 1988.
Bolton street directories (in The Hudson Directory).
Bolton Vital Records; cemetery records.
Bolton Historical Society: photo files; property files: 392 Main St.; 96 Long Hill Rd.
[X] Recommended for listing in the National Register of Historic Places.
If checked, you must attach completed National Register Criteria Statement form is attached.
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