FORM B  BUILDING Assessor’s Number USGS Quad Area(s) Form Number

20 – 0 – 3 Lowell, DRA.81, MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION MA 82, 909 MASSACHUSETTS ARCHIVES BUILDING 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD Town/City: Dracut BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Place: (neighborhood or village): East Dracut

Photograph Address: 312 Marsh Hill Road

Historic Name: Nathaniel Peabody Farm

Uses: Present: Two-Family Residential

Original: Single-family Residential

Date of Construction: c. 1840

Source: Visual, maps

Style/Form: Italianate / Gable Block Connected Farm

Architect/Builder: Unknown

Exterior Material: Foundation: Cut granite

Wall/Trim: Wood clapboard/wood

Locus Map (North is Up) Roof: Asphalt shingle

Outbuildings/Secondary Structures: Multiple connected farm buildings and a windmill tower with storage tank. A small octagonal gazeebo/summer house of recent vintage is sited to the left-rear of the main complex.

Major Alterations (with dates): Sash replacement with vinyl, recent decades.

Condition: Good

Moved: no yes Date:

Acreage: 500,940 sq. ft. / 11.5 acres

Setting: On rural Marsh Hill Road surrounded by other large farms and open, sometimes cultivated land. Limited infill construction or subdivisions in the area.

Recorded by: Jennifer B. Doherty

Organization: Dracut Historical Commission Date (month / year): February, 2017

12/12 Follow Massachusetts Historical Commission Survey Manual instructions for completing this form. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET DRACUT 312 MARSH HILL ROAD

MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 DRA.81, 82, 909

Recommended for listing in the National Register of Historic Places. If checked, you must attach a completed National Register Criteria Statement form.

ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION:

The Nathaniel Peabody Farm is a series of connected farm buildings. This configuration of connected wings, ells and sheds between the main house and barn has been identified by Hubka as the Connected New England Farm Building type. This type of building organization developed during the second half of the nineteenth century throughout southern New England including southwest Maine and New Hampshire and northeast Massachusetts, but spread in lesser concentrations throughout the region. According to Hubka

Two influences were critical to the popularization of the New England connected farm: first, a manor house tradition of Georgian and Federal style estates that employed extended outbuilding wings in a classical villa style, and second, a folk or vernacular building tradition of English origin in which domestic and agrarian structures were attached or closely clustered.1

The Peabody Farm is anchored by the c. 1840 Nathaniel Peabody House, an Italianate style center hall single-family residence. The house is two-and-a-half stories tall and double pile with a symmetrical five-bay façade and center entrance. Small brick chimneys exit the ridgeline between rooms on either side of a central hallway. The house, and all of the other sections of the Peabody Farm, sit on a cut granite foundation, are covered in wood clapboards, and have an asphalt shingle roof. The deep eaves are typical of the building’s Italianate styling, as are the double-leaf doors of the center entry, hip-roofed door hood supported by elaborate jigsaw-cut paired brackets, and the round-headed windows in the gable ends. Although vinyl replacement sash was recently installed, all of the casings appear to survive. Extending from the rear pile of the left elevation is a two-story side-gable wing, one room wide and one room deep; a second shed-roofed pile extends from the rear of this wing. A small brick chimney exits the ridgeline. An enclosed porch with a secondary entrance covers the first floor of the main façade of this wing.

The connected farm buildings extend east from the right elevation of the house. First is a one-and-a-half story side-gable wing that covers the rear pile of the right elevation of the main house. One pile deep, the wing appears to be roughly two rooms wide. The roofline on the left side of the wing’s façade is broken by a shed wall dormer. A small brick chimney exits the ridgeline roughly in the center of the wing. Like the wing on the left side of the house, the main façade is covered by an enclosed porch with a secondary entrance. This entrance is sheltered by a hood supported by brackets identical to those found on the main entry door.

Beyond the two-story section of the wing is a long one-story side gable garage or barn space. Today a large opening at the right end of the connective wing is filled by a garage door, an entry door, and some paneling, but a long track extending to the left above and beyond these openings suggests that a large sliding door once covered the opening. To the left of the large opening is a window with a six-over-six wood sash and a second modern garage bay door.

This wing is connected to the main façade of a large, notably long barn, which is sited parallel to the rest of the complex. The main-drive door of the barn is located in the gable end, just in front of the smaller barn. The location of the main door in the narrower gabled elevation of the barn identifies it as an example of the New England barn type, as opposed to the earlier English barn type, in which the main entrance and carriage drive is located in the broader eave elevation. The New England barn emerged during the early 19th century and was adopted to increase the efficiency of barn circulation and use of space.2 The main drive door is highlighted by a row of square lights as a transom above the door, with three windows above in the gable end indicating a two-story hayloft. The long length of the barn suggests it may have been extended at some point. In contrast to the main house and wings, the barn is covered in vinyl siding. To the left of the main farm complex is a well-preserved and

1 Thomas C. Hubka, Big House, Little House, Back House, Barn, The Connected Farm Buildings of New England (UPNE, 1984) p. 16. 2 Hubka, pp. 52-56; see also Thomas Durant Visser, Field Guide to New England Barns and Farm Buildings (UPNE, 1997) pp. 74-75 and John Michael Vlach, Barns (W.W. Norton, 2003) pp. 33-45. Continuation sheet 1 INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET DRACUT 312 MARSH HILL ROAD

MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 DRA.81, 82, 909 remarkable survival: a late-19th – early 20th-century cast iron or steel windmill structure with a wood-barrel water tank suspended in the tower, pictured below.

Sited on the north side of Marsh Hill Road, the Nathaniel Peabody Farm faces south across the street. A paved circular driveway fills the dooryard area, with a wood board fence at the property line. The property extends back from the street and is open, although it is unclear if it is cultivated or not. A stand of mature trees directly to the west of the house provides a windbreak for the buildings and barnyard. While the house was constructed as a single-family building, today the assessor lists the property as a two-family residence.

HISTORICAL NARRATIVE

Early deeds are difficult to trace for the Nathaniel Peabody Farm, but it was likely built in the early to mid-nineteenth century with potentially multiple updates leading up to a c. 1870-1880 major renovation giving it a more Italianate appearance. A house is marked in the area of the Nathaniel Peabody Farm on the 1856 Middlesex County map. There were two Nathaniel Peabodys living in Dracut at that time. The elder Nathaniel Peabody (Feb. 26, 1792 – Mar. 24 -1857) married Mary Gilchrist (Aug. 13, 1800 – Dec. 24, 1845) on February 22, 1822. The couple had nine children, including a son, Nathaniel Peabody (Feb. 17, 1823 – Jan. 25, 1917).

The younger Nathaniel Peabody married Elizabeth Ann Blackwell (Nov. 27, 1823 – Dec. 7, 1879) in Lowell on August 3, 1845.3 The two Nathaniel Peabody families were listed together in the 1850 census. The household consisted of the elder Nathaniel Peabody and four of his daughters, his son John W., his son Nathaniel, the younger Nathaniel’s wife Elizabeth, and three of their young children. Three farm laborers were also living with the family. The connected farmhouse as it currently appears could either be an early nineteenth-century building with multiple layers of additions and renovations likely coinciding with any of the above listed marriages or could have entirely replaced an earlier building with the cohabitation of the two identified generations of the Peabody family related above.

Nathaniel and Elizabeth Blackwell Peabody had ten children between 1846 and 1860, including son Natt Wesley (Mar. 1, 1857 – Oct. 20, 1917).4: Census records from the late nineteenth century record the large family living together, often with additional hired servants and farm laborers. In 1880, Nathaniel Peabody sold his landholdings to his son, Natt W. Peabody, for $10,000.5 This deed covered four parcels of 150, 20, 14, and 3 acres, and included land in neighboring Pelham, New Hampshire, illustrating the extent of Nathaniel Peabody’s farm on Marsh Hill. The federal agricultural census from the same year recorded Nathaniel Peabody’s farm as valued at $22,000, and noted that it produced 27,000 gallons of milk, 2,000 bushels of potatoes, and 100 cords of wood, and had 1,500 bearing apple trees. The sale to Natt W. Peabody took place shortly after his December 24, 1876 marriage to Ella M. Goodhue (d. Dec. 11, 1918).

Natt W. Peabody did not own the family farm for long; in 1889, he sold it to Roswell S. Fox, Franklin P. Fox, and Ebenezer T. Fox for $16,000.6 The Foxes then sold two of the lots, including the Nathaniel Peabody Farm, to brothers Alton B. Bryant (Jul. 2, 1869 – Jan. 8, 1934) and Frank D. Bryant (b. c. 1868) in 1892.7 Natives of Maine, the Bryant brothers moved to Dracut with their parents and wives, where they ran a large, successful dairy for many years at the Nathaniel Peabody Farm.8

The 1900 census recorded the extended Bryant family on Marsh Hill Road: parents Benjamin R. (b. c. 1844) and Ellen F. (b. c. 1846), sons Frank D., Alton B., and Mason D. (b. c. 1884), and daughters-in-law Christie H. (b. c. 1877) and Helen (b. c.

3 Ancestry.com: Dracut vital records; US Federal Census of Population for 1850, 1860, 1870, 1880; US Federal Agricultural Census for 1880. 4 Nathaniel and Elizabeth Ann (Blackwell) Peabody’s other children were Eldora E. (1855 – Feb. 15, 1917), Martin Nathaniel (Aug. 24, 1846 – Oct. 23, 1846), twins Angelia Harriet (Jan. 25, 1848 – Jan. 22, 1890) and Lucelia Mary (b. Jan. 25, 1848), Alexine Eliza (Feb. 26, 1850 – Jul. 4, 1860), Orville William (b. Jun. 7, 1852), Frank LeForest (b. Aug. 1, 1854), Dora Elizabeth (b. Dec. 13, 1855), and Frederick Barker (Apr. 19, 1860 – Sep. 2, 1860). 5 MCNRD Book 138, Page 462, April 9, 1880 6 MCNRD Book 202, Page 438, January 21, 1889 7 MCNRD Book 233, Page 228, May 17, 1892 8 Ancestry.com: US Federal Census of Population for 1900, 1920, 1930 and 1940. The Lowell Sun: “Dracut Town Treasurer Dies,” 9 January 1934. Alton B. Bryant’s wife is often listed in census records as Helen, but his obituary gives her names as Ellen C. Hanchett Bryant. It is unclear if this is a consistent misspelling or if he remarried. The 1930 census notes that son Burton was adopted. Continuation sheet 2 INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET DRACUT 312 MARSH HILL ROAD

MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 DRA.81, 82, 909 1873). The family was also living with two farm laborers. Later census records show it was likely the Bryants that converted the house to a two-family residence. Brothers Alton and Frank and their families were recorded in the census together in 1920, at the same house but in two separate households. Frank D. Bryant was living with his wife Christie and their son Frank K. (b. c. 1903). Alton B. Bryant was living with his wife Helen C., their son Burton D. (b. c. 1904), and his widowed mother Ellen F. The households were largely the same in 1930, although Burton D. Bryant had married; his wife Helen J. (b. c. 1903) and daughter Helen I. (b. c. 1926) had joined the Bryant household. All the men were listed as farm laborers.

Alton B. Bryant’s 1934 obituary notes that he was living at 1721 Bridge Street, where he had lived since retiring from the family dairy business in 1931. The 1940 census recorded his brother still at the Nathaniel Peabody Farm, with the Alton B. Bryant family’s place taken by his nephew Frank K. Bryant and family. Frank K. Bryant was living with his wife, Elizabeth H. (b. c. 1907) and their son Richard D. (b. c. 1933).

Following the death of his father, Frank K. Bryant sold the Nathaniel Peabody Farm to new owners in 1953.9 John J. and Janina C. Boumil purchased land on the north and south sides of Marsh Hill Road from Bryant. The Boumils continued the farm operation. The property is currently owned by their daughter, Meredith.10

BIBLIOGRAPHY and/or REFERENCES

1856 Henry F. Walling, Map of Middlesex County, Massachusetts 1875 F. W. Beers, County Atlas of Middlesex, Massachusetts. 1889 Geo. H. Walker & Co., Atlas of Middlesex County, Massachusetts.

Ancestry.com: see footnotes Coburn, Silas R. History of Dracut, Massachusetts. Lowell, MA: The Courier-Citizen Co., 1922. Cutter, William Richard, A. M. Historic Homes and Places and Genealogical and Personal Memoirs Relating to the Families of Middlesex County, Massachusetts, Volume IV. New York, NY: Lewis Historical Publishing Company, 1908. Middlesex County North Registry of Deeds (MCNRD): see footnotes Peabody, Samuel Hobart, LL.D. Peabody Genealogy. Boston, MA: Charles H. Pope, Publisher, 1909.

9 MCNRD Book 1227, Page 459, and Book 1227, Page 461, July 2, 1953 10 MCNRD Book 2423, Page 618 June 11, 1980. The Lowell Sun: “Janina C. ‘Jay’ (Plachna) Boumil,” 24 November 2012. Continuation sheet 3 INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET DRACUT 312 MARSH HILL ROAD

MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 DRA.81, 82, 909

Main entrance detail showing door hood, brackets, door, foundation and window casings.

The main façade of the Nathaniel Peabody House. Continuation sheet 4 INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET DRACUT 312 MARSH HILL ROAD

MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 DRA.81, 82, 909

The connected farm buildings of the Nathaniel Peabody Farm.

The Nathaniel Peabody Barn

Continuation sheet 5 INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET DRACUT 312 MARSH HILL ROAD

MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 DRA.81, 82, 909

Metal windmill sited west of the farm; note gazebo or summerhouse of recent vintage to the left. View from the west.

Continuation sheet 6 INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET DRACUT 312 MARSH HILL ROAD

MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 DRA.81, 82, 909

National Register of Historic Places Criteria Statement Form

Check all that apply:

Individually eligible Eligible only in a historic district

Contributing to a potential historic district Potential historic district

Criteria: A B C D

Criteria Considerations: A B C D E F G

Statement of Significance by_____Jennifer B. Doherty______The criteria that are checked in the above sections must be justified here.

The Nathaniel Peabody Farm, constructed ca. 1840, is eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places as a contributing property to a larger Marsh Hill Road historic district. The Nathaniel Peabody Farm is part of a cluster of historic farmsteads on Marsh Hill Road, most of which retain their historic acreage and which are still used for agricultural purposes. Although some of the historic acreage associated with the property has been subdivided, land around the Nathaniel Peabody Farm is still cultivated and the property generally retains integrity of workmanship, design, materials, association, location, setting, and feeling. The Nathaniel Peabody Farm has been used as a farmstead continuously since the house’s construction c. 1840, and is significant as an example of rural residential and barn construction in Dracut from the late nineteenth century. It is therefore eligible under criteria A and C.

Continuation sheet 7