COLONIAL ESSEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.   Term Paper ID:25578 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: Examines architectural development, land use & town planning, focusing on Fuller family houses in Middleton.... More...

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Paper Abstract: Examines architectural development, land use & town planning, focusing on Fuller family houses in Middleton. Paper Introduction: The rapid, steady development of Essex County, Massachusetts led to the creation of an architectural landscape that, by the end of the colonial period, differed considerably from those of other rural regions of New England. The Fuller houses of Middleton demonstrate the type of house that predominated in Middleton and similar Essex communities. The history of the family displays a common pattern for the region as the economically advanced Fullers moved into an outlying area and, building on their advantage, became leading citizens of the township that grew up around them. Recent scholarship has challenged some of the prevailing notions about the village settlement and architectural makeup of New England towns. Joseph Wood's studies of settlement patterns have demonstrated that the notion that the villages of New Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. It was built on or near the siteof Andrew's father John's house, a smaller dwelling that may have served asa store, until it was moved across the street in 1813 and made into adwelling again (Watkins 17 ). The New England Village. Even in other towns near the coast, such as the large older townof Middleborough in Plymouth county, "more than 9 % [of the houses] werestill one story in height at the end of the eighteenth century" (Wood 84).The earliest settlements in Essex county, of course, featured one-roomhouses. The DanielFuller house, first mentioned in a deed of 1765, is believed to have beenbuilt in 1759 for Archelaus' second wife (Watkins 177). builtat the extreme northern end of emergent Middleton, and this is attested toby his appointment by the Salem selectmen as "an overseer of the highwayfrom his house to Andover bounds" (quoted in Watkins 154). The house, on Old South Main Street, abutted the Fullerfamily burial ground. Indeed, "themodal form of settlement was dispersed from the 163 s on and even manynucleated settlements were short-lived" (Woods 54). This Thomas Fuller was the son of Thomas Fuller Jr., who isbelieved to have lived in this house by 1684. The similarities leadto the inference that Bradford also built Andrew's 185 house. Thus their form was not specifically designed. The rapid, steady development of Essex County, Massachusetts led tothe creation of an architectural landscape that, by the end of the colonialperiod, differed considerably from those of other rural regions of NewEngland. ThomasFuller house (Watkins 155) began the pattern of house-building that wastypical of dispersed settlements. New Haven: Yale UP, 1924.Klocek, Joseph, and Janet Maxfield. Timothy Fuller then purchased the second Fuller house. Thomas Fuller, Jr. Essex County benefited fromthe economic success of coastal Salem and came to provide "relatively moreunity and stability than its counterparts" (Pinkham 185). Architecture and Town Planning in Colonial Connecticut. By the time of the 1798 Census, "in towns near the coast likeDanvers, Topsfield, and Middleton, more than 8 % of the houses were twostories in height" (Wood 83). ThoughWatkins describes the decoration of the woodwork as "rather crude," thepresence of decorative construction in itself avers to the family'sincreasing wealth (154). Middleton, Massachusetts, Area D, form no. "Eastern Massachusetts." Colonial Architecture in Massachusetts. The Fuller houses of Middleton demonstrate the type of house thatpredominated in Middleton and similar Essex communities. FollowingArchelaus' death in 1776, the house passed to his wife and his young sonDaniel. "Jacob Fuller House. Though the present house was added to considerably, it began as a 2-story house with 2 rooms on each floor. The oldestremaining house in Middleton, however, is called the Lieutenant ThomasFuller house. Captain Andrew Fuller is mentioned in the records as a "mariner," but"there is no record of his transactions or activities" during 7 years inwhich he left Middleton--returning a wealthy man (Watkins 17 ). Itwas destroyed by fire in 19 5, but can be seen in a photograph featured inWatkins' history of the town (157). Ed. The conventional view had been that the NewEngland colonists "formed compact villages gathered around a centralmeetinghouse" (Wood 54). But, while this may have been the case with the first Thomas'house, none of the surviving Fuller houses followed this procedure. "Danvers, Massachusetts, Part II." Colonial Architecture in Massachusetts. Thomas Fuller and his descendants demonstrate how Essex County, andMiddleton in particular, conformed to the ideas Wood sets out. New York: Oxford UP, 1952.Pinkham, Harold A. . The house is located at 119 South Main Street and was builtby Archelaus Fuller in 1759. The house, which was located on East Street, was builton land that Andrew purchased jointly with a Timothy Fuller. built on the family land (given to him by Thomas Sr.), near the burialground, but at a distance from the first house. The Fullerhouses that remain today show a gradual process of filling in the spacesbetween houses. House. This house on King Street, which isnow known as the Captain Andrew Fuller house, was "a bulky, rather high,center-chimney structure" (Watkins 171). When later generations began, as Captain Andrew Fuller did, toemploy their economic advantage outside Middleton, they returned evenwealthier than when they left. "Daniel Fuller House. The Early Domestic Architecture of Connecticut. The Daniel Fuller house is simpler than Captain Andrew's, and theyounger Benjamin's family was clearly not as wealthy as his cousin'sfamily. In addition,photographs of 2 Fuller houses, destroyed in 19 5 and in the 188 s, alsosurvive. Robert G. 3 1." Building history form. As Wood shows, this type of dispersed village predominated in EssexCounty. Robert G. As Brown has shown, this imposinghouse began as a two-story, single-room type dwelling c.167 , but additionsmade in 1689, 17 , 175 and 1832 brought it to the status of a 17 roomhouse with 3 floors (Brown, "Part II," 9 ). Much of the original work also survives in theinterior. A comparison of the photograph of the destroyed house (Watkins 169)and the second house (Watkins 168) shows that they were very similar. As the photograph shows, however, thehouse is very similar in style to the Lt. This idea was widely accepted for all of NewEngland except the most western edges. Ed. The south entryway, forexample, featured a projection beyond the front of the house, which mightbe original (such projections were often additions to older houses), andthe attic featured twin stairs that would have been useful when the housewas being used by more than one family (Watkins 165). The history ofthe family displays a common pattern for the region as the economicallyadvanced Fullers moved into an outlying area and, building on theiradvantage, became leading citizens of the township that grew up aroundthem. Clearly, the Fuller family's extant housesin Middleton demonstrate how Essex County's townships developed and how thearchitectural landscape of these towns became so very different from thoseof the rest of Massachusetts. Certainly additions to the single room, 1- or 2-story plan were verycommon. List of Works CitedBrown, Frank Chouteau. Miner. 7 -85.Brown, Frank Chouteau. Taxrecords showed that Andrew Fuller, along with Thomas Cave, paid the highesttaxes in Middleton in the 176 s. It is not surprising, therefore, that hishouse "is a more pretentious dwelling than the average country farmhouse"(Watkins 171). Boston: Massachusetts Historical Commission, 1978.Kelly, John Frederick. Thomas Fuller had 5 sons; Thomas Jr., John, Jacob, Joseph andBenjamin. B. When Andrew Fuller left this house to his son Johnin 179 , it was referred to as a "mansion house" (Watkins 173). Recent scholarship has challenged some of the prevailing notionsabout the village settlement and architectural makeup of New England towns. Subsequently, such families assumed, asboth Andrew and Archelaus Fuller did, important roles in the Revolution,and functioned as leading citizens of Middleton in political and socialaffairs. Boston: Massachusetts Historical Commission, 1978.Maxfield, Janet. "Lt. Cambridge: Belknap-Harvard UP, 1979.Embury, Aymar. This ideaof a village, based largely on assumptions about the villages of thesettlers' homeland, is, however, inaccurate. The exception to the newly discovered rule was, of course, EssexCounty. The house, which stands at 1 South Main Street, was listed inthe State Census of 1798 as an "Old Dwelling House," and is generally datedc.1714 on the evidence of Jacob's deed of gift to his own son Jacob whichshows that the house "must have been built before 1716" (Watkins 161). Thehouse has been altered considerably, with numerous additions--such as thecarriage house that has turned it into a two-family dwelling (Maxfield 2).But the basic saltbox roof and the original plan of the house (2 rooms upand 2 down) can still be discerned from various vantage points inside andoutside the house. "Essex: From English Shire to American County." Essex Institute Historical Collections 119 (1983): 182-91.Watkins, Lura Woodside. But, as Wood's careful study of the Massachusetts 1798 Direct TaxCensus demonstrates, for most of Massachusetts the two-story house was, byfar, the exception. In 1698, after his father's death, Thomas Jr.made the same arrangement, specifying the rental of the west end of thehouse, with his son John and later, after John built his own house, withhis son William (Watkins 154). Boston: Sawyer, 197 .Wood, Joseph S. As Cummings' detailed study of Massachusetts Bay houses has shown,such houses predominated at the beginning of every early settlement nearthe coast. 3 2." Building history form. The third house is known as the Jacob Fuller house (Watkins 16 ). Middleton, and other Essex County towns were a definite exception tothe rule. New York: Arno, 1977. When Thomas Fuller arrived in Middleton he was able to build a fairlysubstantial house. The DanielFuller house is still large, however, and was certainly preferred to thesmaller, 2-story house that stood on the land he received from Benjamin,and "must have been the old dwelling of the first Benjamin Fuller and hisson" (Watkins 178). in 169 . But Timothy, who"was carrying on all kinds of business enterprises," decided to buy out hisfather's estate, paying £15 for 14 acres and the buildings in 174 . 11." Building history form. Thoughall the houses had additions of one kind or another, all of them began as 2-story houses with more than one room per story. Stillrelying on that capital, they were able to establish businesses and buildsubstantial homes. Suchmisconceptions were based on ideas stemming from the practice of "theevolutionary concept of history so popular in the early twentieth century"(Garvan 117). The houses discussed here are usually called after theindividuals who built them, or caused them to be built. This is partly because theterm "village," which was an official designation, like "town," wasactually used in the seventeenth century to refer to communities that weresubordinate to towns, regardless of their shape or type. New York: Arno, 1977. This has led to grossly exaggerated notions of thearchitecture of the region, such as Embury's contention that in easternMassachusetts, "there was practically no building of down right uglinessand there were a very great many of consummate beauty" (185). Early American Architecture: From the First Colonial Settlements to the National Period. Though Thomas Fuller's housedid not survive, it must have been substantial since, in addition to thefact that he had a large family, he began renting out the east end of thehouse to Thomas Jr. The prevailing spatial view, "based ontheoretical rings of decreasing intensity of land use with increasingdistance from the center," had reinforced this idea (Wood 53). This house does not survive. The conventional view was Frederick Kelly's "logicalevolutionary sequence," based on the study of house plans (cited inMorrison 22). It is a two-story, center-chimney house to which asaltbox lean-to was added at a later date. This date, and thearchitectural evidence, have resulted in a date of c.168 for the building(Watkins 154). Daniel became one of the leading citizens of the town and thehouse, which has been converted into a restaurant named after DanielFuller, has usually retained his name rather than his father's (Watkins178). Built by the sons and grandsons of the first Thomas Fuller, thesehouses range in date from 168 to 175 . But, Andrewbought Timothy out a short time later and kept the house. The house was located on the east side of Mount VernonStreet, facing the Fuller burial ground. Thus it seemsthat "he was probably living in it as early as 1714" (Watkins 163).Structural evidence reinforces this idea and the house is usually datedc.1714. Though the house isonly first mentioned in a deed of October 1722, it must have been builtearlier. Only there, in "one of the oldest, wealthiest, and most denselypopulated agricultural regions of the entire east coast, can a general casebe made for the widespread existence of larger, more substantial houses atthe end of the eighteenth century" (Wood 83). Joseph Wood's studies of settlement patterns have demonstrated that thenotion that the villages of New England were primarily strongly nucleatedsettlements is incorrect. New Haven: Yale UP, 1951.George, Sarah B. Though it is readily apparentthat surviving houses would represent the higher end of the economic scale,the conventional view has held that these houses predominated throughoutcolonial New England. The tavern was built by SamuelBradford, a carpenter who turned innkeeper, in 1753. not to split into moremanageable social, religious and (eventually) political units--villages"(Wood 59). By the time he made a will, in 1738-1739,Lieutenant Thomas was a wealthy man. Archelaus was the son of Benjamin Jr., whowas the son of the first Thomas' youngest son, Benjamin. High-ceilinged rooms with beautiful paneling are finishedwith cornices. Kelly held that in Connecticut "the two-room plan prevailedup to 165 ; that from 165 to 1675 it shared honors with the added lean-totype; and that from 1675 to 17 the original lean-to became general"(Kelly cited in Morrison 22). In response to the demand, andwith the provision of very large tracts of land, Essex county "filled inrapidly, towns were founded quickly, and subregions formed early" (Pinkham185). Middleton, Massachusetts, Area D, form no. The Lt. 168 , that survives today. The house may, of course, have followed aplan similar to the process of accretion that was demonstrated for theJudge Holten house in nearby Danvers. Some of the construction detailsdemonstrate the expensive quality of the house. Five of theextant colonial houses of Middleton were built by descendants of ThomasFuller, blacksmith, who migrated to Middleton from Woburn in 1663 to becomeone of the original settlers of Will's Hill (George 2). 184-9 .Garvan, Anthony N. ThomasJr. "To the north and west was much rich soil disposed upongently rolling hillsides and fertile valleys, and more protected" fromrough coastal weather (Brown, "Part I" 71). The first Thomas Fuller purchased 3 acres in the vicinity and added"a still larger tract" later on (Watkins 153). As the Town of Salem grew, the increased need for agriculturalproducts made it necessary that Salem Village, or "the Farms," become thesource of food. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1997. By 1798, in Worcester County in central Massachusetts,38% of all dwellings were small 1-or 2-room buildings of 6 square feet orless, and the majority of the remaining houses had only a single story(Wood 78-79). Thomas Fuller house. Building on capital acquired elsewhere,settlers in Middleton were able to purchase large tracts of land. Thomas Fuller house was also a substantial dwelling. . The Framed Houses of Massachusetts Bay, 1625- 1725. The fireplaces throughout are unusually large, and"wainscoting and sheathing of feather-edged boards was found in thekitchen" (Watkins 173). For somereason Andrew, then the wealthiest man in Middleton, chose not to live inthe house, and built another c.185 . Ed. Then, as in many cases inMassachusetts and Connecticut, "Salem's settlers were simply too widelydispersed from homesteading on great lots . Miner. He left his land and many buildings,including holdings in nearby Reading, to his son Timothy. Miner. Garvan too found that the conventional view, based onKelly's ideas, while it "appeared reasonable by virtue of its appeal to asense of progress" did not even bear up with close examination of extantConnecticut houses (118). Having a great deal of land on which tobuild, several generations of Fullers allowed distance between theirhouses, but kept them close enough for easy access to each other. He later gave itto his son David Fuller, who lived there from 1788 to 1821. 86-99.Cummings, Abbott Lowell. Joseph was another son of Thomas Fuller Jr. The sacrifice entailedgiving up his own education, as well as providing the money. The Joseph Fuller house on Essex Street was also a chimney-centersaltbox. But even the house of Benjamin Sr., which was built c.17 , was a two-story dwelling that, small as it was, was still not the standard in therest of Massachusetts in 1798. Boston: Massachusetts Historical Commission, 1978.Morrison, Hugh. But, asthe settlers spread out into subregions such as Middleton in the 166 s,very often they were not pioneering in the same sense. Middleton, Massachusetts: A Cultural History. In the area around the future village of Middleton, for example,the places that were called villages in the colonial records, displayed thedispersed settlement form far more often than the nucleated form.Topsfield, Boxford, Beverly, Wenham, Manchester, Danvers and Reading wereall dispersed settlement villages, while only Andover was based on thenucleated form. If this building was John's house, it wasmuch smaller than Andrew's, but did have two floors. Middleton, Massachusetts, Area A, form no. The last of the Fuller houses is known either as the ColonelArchelaus Fuller house (Watkins 175) or the Daniel Fuller house (Klocek andMaxfield 1). In 1663 he already had a family (his son Thomas Jr.married in 1669) and, in addition to his house, he quickly built ablacksmith shop and a sawmill (Watkins 153). Thefirst house was built by Andrew in 1748, probably in 1748, and was torndown in the 188 s. Joseph had owned the site since 1699, and all 6 children of his1713 marriage were born before the date of the 1722 deed. Manyof the second house's details also duplicate those found in another extantbuilding, the Estey Tavern (Watkins 23 ). Itwas built by the first Thomas' son Jacob, who was also a blacksmith. This largesaltbox house was built by a Jonathan Fuller, a tanner, in the 169 s andwas purchased by Timothy in 174 when Jonathan moved to Sutton,Massachusetts. The olderBenjamin's own house, of which the cellar remained until the mid-twentiethcentury, was located very near the site of Archelaus' house. The original holdings,combined with the land that was acquired by his sons meant that "theFullers owned a large part of the village" (Watkins 153). The Lt. Archelaus Fuller, who built the house, received half of Benjamin'slands in Middleton in return for having made the great sacrifice of £15 that allowed his two brothers to attend Harvard. Their sons, in turn, had the early advantage ofsufficient capital and land to establish themselves in comfortablesituations. The fifth and sixth houses were both built by Captain Andrew Fuller.Andrew was the son of John, the second son of the original Thomas. Another study conducted by Wood demonstrated the fallacy inherent inthe notion that the typical vernacular architectural landscape ofeighteenth-century colonial New England consisted of two-story homes of thetype that have most commonly been preserved. "Danvers, Massachusetts, Part I." Colonial Architecture in Massachusetts. In many cases, these villages, like Middleton, were simplyoutlying neighborhoods of the Town of Salem. This is true even of theearliest of the Fuller houses, dated c. "Clearly, the immediate need for shelter under pioneerconditions" led to early settlers' reliance on 1-room houses that were"soon enlarged as their situation in life improved" (Cummings 22). Robert G. New York: Arno, 1977. 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