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INVENTORY FORM CONTINUATION SHEET |
Community |
Property |
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Bolton |
179 Main Street |
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Form No. 59 |
ASSESSOR'S PARCEL: 5E-4 ACREAGE: 1.5 acres FILM ROLL/NEGATIVE: XIV-26, 27
(Former address: 179 Great Road)
ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION, cont. Although built within a year or so of its very similar neighbor to the east, the Edwin Whitcomb House at 175 Main Street (see Form #58), in many of its details the Abraham Wilder House has advanced from the Federal into the Greek Revival style. It is a five- by two-bay side-gabled house, with paired rear chimneys, clad in the same warm red brick veneer seen at the Whitcomb House. The windows here are 6-over-9-sash, with molded wood surrounds and what appear to be early or original louvered wood blinds (shutters). The main center entry, rather than displaying an elliptical fanlight, is now surrounded by trim boards embellished with Greek Revival moldings. Four-pane sidelights above paneled aprons flank the door, which is presently concealed by a vertical-board storm door. The trim on the main house
includes a molded cornice with a bed molding and frieze across the facade, but no returns or roof overhang on the gable ends.
A long two-story clapboard wing on the west end of the house is of very similar proportions to that at the Edwin Whitcomb House. Its facade is five bays at the first story, four at the second. The three windows at the first story are large 2-over-2-sash, interspersed with two entries--one with a modern glass-and-panel door, the other with a very narrow vertical-board door. The windows at the second story are single 9-light windows on the east portion, and very wide 2-over-2-sash on the western part. The outer (west) portion of the wing appears to have been a shed or had another utilitarian function, as its west gable end has another narrow vertical-board door at the first story, and what appears to be a hay door on the second. A very shallow one-story clapboarded leanto extends across all or part of the rear of the main building. The
setting of this house, which has an intact pair of venerable sugar maples in the front yard, and a remnant of the same type of front carriage drive as #175, also appears to be authentic to its nineteenth century appearance.
It is not known who the builder of this house was, but a Burnham family account book shows that in 1835 carpenter Reuben Burnham did 9 1/2 days worth of work here, including building a door.
HISTORICAL NARRATIVE, cont.
Formerly called the Wilder/Finlay House, current research has renamed this building the Abraham Wilder House. It was built between 1827 and 1830 on a small parcel purchased for $80 by its original owner, Abraham Wilder, from his great-uncle Jonathan Whitcomb, who had retained most of the land surrounding the adjoining piece owned by Abraham's father, Moses. (See Form #60--185 Main Street). Abraham had married Lucinda Houghton in 1825, and they may have started married life next door at his parents' house. Both Abraham and Moses Wilder were blacksmiths, and worked in the stone blacksmith shop that Moses had built just east of #185. Over the years Moses both acquired and sold several more pieces of land; on one of them, located to the west of Moses' house, either Moses or Abraham built a barn. In 1849, Moses, by then an old man, deeded the
blacksmith shop to Abraham, and a few years later, in 1853, Abraham bought the lime quarry property (but not the limestone itself, as the quarry business had been sold out of the family) from Edwin A. Whitcomb (see Form #58--175 Main Street).
Abraham and Lucinda had three children, but she died in 1835 at the age of 32. Later that year Abraham was married again, to Cynthia Fletcher. They had at least three more children. In 1855, shortly after his father's death, Abraham sold all his property in Bolton to his younger brother, Isaac Allen Wilder, who had inherited their father's house. Abraham and Cynthia appear to have left Bolton around that time.
Isaac Wilder held on to both houses for many years, but in 1868 he sold this house to Sarah G. Kent, wife of Henry Kent of Boston. Although the relationship between husband and wife was probably already strained, Henry Kent set up a cigar-making business on the property for a few years. In 1872, however, in a rare occurrence in nineteenth-century Bolton, Sarah Kent obtained a divorce from her husband on grounds of adultery. Returning to her maiden name of Sarah Gott, she retained ownership of the house. By 1880, however, she had remarried, as she is listed then as Sarah G. Marsh.
Sarah Gott (Kent) Marsh owned about five acres here. She died in 1918 or 1919, and the next owner of the property was Edith N. Brackett, wife of Epps G.H. Brackett. She, too, may have subsequently been divorced or separated from her husband, as within two years she had moved to Maine, from which, as an "unmarried" woman, she sold the house to Estella Marsh of Hudson. It was quickly sold to Flora Rose, a real estate broker, who in 1922 sold it to Alton and Ida Small. They apparently bought the house for one of their mothers to live in, an arrangement that was clearly unsuccessful, as she disliked it, and they had to sell it again in 1925. The purchaser was Frederick Finley (Findlay) and his wife, Ethel. They also quickly resold the property, in 1926, but held a mortgage on it, which they foreclosed in 1927. They returned here to
Bolton to live, where they raised their five children. Mr. Finley died in 1937, but Mrs. Finley remained here until the late 1980's.
BIBLIOGRAPHY and/or REFERENCES
Maps and atlases: 1831 (M. Wilder); 1857 (I. Wilder); 1870 (HH Kent; cigar manufactory); 1898 (Sarah Marsh). Whitcomb, E. About Bolton, 1988. . "Mrs. Finley's House". N.D. Bolton street directories (in The Hudson Directory). Bolton Vital Records; cemetery records.
[X] Recommended for listing in the National Register of Historic Places.
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