INVENTORY FORM CONTINUATION SHEET Community Property
Bolton 299 South Bolton Road
Moore/Newton House
Massachusetts Historical Commission
Massachusetts Archives Building
220 Morrissey Boulevard
Boston, Massachusetts 02125 Area(s)
Form No.
140; 247
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION BY ANNE FORBES, CONSULTANT TO BOLTON HISTORICAL COMMISSION, APRIL 1998:
ASSESSOR'S PARCEL: 2C-22 ACREAGE: 2.3 acres FILM ROLL/NEGATIVE: X-11, 12, 15
ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION, cont.
The construction date of this little center-chimney, five- by three-bay Greek Revival Cape Cod house is somewhat uncertain, as it may have been one of the buildings standing on the farm that James Moore purchased in 1810, or it may have been constructed after a smaller house (possibly the north ell) was moved from across the road after 1831. Most of its exterior detail suggests the later date. The windows are 6-over-6-sash, set into flat surrounds trimmed with a molding at the outer edge. The house has a molded, boxed cornice with returns, but no roof overhang on the gable ends; a sillboard, and undecorated cornerboards. The entry has an unusual eight-panel door with applied moldings, and 4-pane sidelights above paneled aprons. The Greek Revival entry surround, of molded boards with cornerblocks and a central panel over the door, is most
characteristics of the style as executed in the mid-1830's.
The one-story north ell has the same type of windows and detailing as the main house. A large cross-gabled section, which may be either the house James Moore is thought to have moved or another relocated by Nathaniel Newton, extends directly behind the ell to the northwest. The roof of an open breezeway to connects it to a mid-nineteenth-century "New England" style barn (#247). The barn's main gable-end, which faces south, has an off-center vertical-board wagon door of the interior rolling type, a 6-over-6-sash window in the gable peak, and a cluster of fixed 6-over-6-pane windows above and to the left of the door. Like the house, the barn has a fully-finished molded, boxed cornice, with returns but no end overhang.
HISTORICAL NARRATIVE, cont.
Formerly called by its later traditional name of "the Wooden Haynes House", current research has resulted in a change in historic name to the Sawyer/Haynes House.
Formerly called the Newton/Cary House, current research has resulted in a name change to the Moore/Newton House. According to family tradition, some part of this building formerly stood on the opposite side of the road, at the location where 302 South Bolton (see Form #139) is shown on later maps. On the map of 1831, the owner is shown as "J. Moore". This was James Moore, who would thus have relocated his home sometime between 1831 and 1857. He bought the property of 116 acres on both sides of the road (with "buildings thereon") in 1810. He had married Hannah Peters in 1800, who bore him at least five children between 1801 and 1813. Among them were James Moore, Jr. (born 1809), who may have been the "J. Moore" shown as the owner at the new location in 1857, and Julia Moore (born 1813), who married Nathaniel
A. Newton (born 1814) in 1839.
Nathaniel A. Newton, who by 1870 owned the property on both sides of the road, (extending as far north as today's Century Mill Road on the east side), was a Selectmen for several years after the Civil War. He was thus in a position to approve the road-building and improvement projects that were proposed by the petition of the farmers in the area, the most important of which was the building of Century Mill Road in 1872, which opened up a much more direct route to Stow and the east section of Bolton. (See Form E: Century Mills). The Newtons had at least three children, Francis, Caroline (who in 1877 became the first woman to be elected to the Bolton School Committee), and Christopher Columbus Moore Newton, who had the distinction of being the first baby baptised in the re-furbished First Parish Church in 1845.
Caroline (Caro) Moore Newton (1840/41-1903[4]), who never married, was a longtime schoolteacher in Bolton. She lived in this house for all or much of her life, and after the death of her parents she became the owner of the farm, which still covered 113 acres. After she died, however, the property was reduced to 7.5 acres around the house. It had a series of short-term owners between 1904 and 1951, when it was bought by William and Dorothea Cary, who owned it for over thirty years. For a number of years they had a nursery business called the Bolton Nursery. They established gardens and woodland trails on this and on what is now adjoining property, which have been maintained and restored in recent years.
BIBLIOGRAPHY and/or REFERENCES
Maps and atlases: 1831 (J. Moore--on opposite side of road); 1857 (J. Moore); 1870 (NA Newton); 1898 (Mrs. CM Newton).
Whitcomb, E. About Bolton, 1988.
Bolton street directories (in The Hudson Directory).
Bolton vital records.
"299 South Bolton Road". Undated manuscript.
Bolton Historical Society: family files.
[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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