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INVENTORY FORM CONTINUATION SHEET Town Property Address LEXINGTON 36 HANCOCK ST. MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. MASSACHUSETTS ARCHIVES BUILDING 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD 119 BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 HISTORICAL NARRATIVE continued Rev. Clarke for several weeks for their safety. It was to the Hancock-Clarke House that Paul Revere and Thomas Dawes came on the night of April 18, 1775to warn that Hancock and Adams their arrest might be immanent. Rev. Clarke's role in recording the battle and promoting the memory of it further reinforced the importance of the site. Because of its associations with the beginning of the Revolution,the Hancock-Clarke House was revered and preserved by subsequent owners,beginning with Rev. Clarke's two unmarried daughters,who lived on in the house until their deaths in 1843 and 1844. Though the house was sold out of the family,the memory of its association with the Revolution continued to grow. Nineteenth century owners received visitors interested in the dwelling's history, including thousands of visitors who came at the time of the Centennial celebration in Lexington in 1875. Published accounts and descriptions of the house and illustrations of it appeared with increasing frequency. It was only in the 1890s,when the then owner wanted to demolish the house to extend her lawn that,despite its historical associations,the house was threatened. In 1896,the Lexington Historical Society stepped in to save the building by purchasing it,moving it across the street and restoring it. Apparently every Lexington family along with many outside donors contributed to the cost of these actions. The saving of the Hancock-Clarke House by the Lexington Historical Society and the opening of it as a museum the following year was only the fourth time in Massachusetts that a local group saved an historic building and opened it as a house museum. The reason why the Lexington Historical Society saved the house was articulated in the organization's meeting minutes in 1904. It was to be"a new shrine for the eager pilgrim, a new alter whereon thousands who make this pilgrimage may pledge themselves to the service of a genuine patriotism." In 1964,the status of the house as an icon of the American Revolution was reinforced when the Daughters of the American Revolution chose to replicate the parlor bedroom where Hancock and Adams stayed to represent Massachusetts in their museum in Washington,DC. The Lexington Historical Society has been the steward of property since 1896. In 1974, after the original site was bequeathed to the Society,the organization moved the house back across Hancock Street to its original location. Conceived as a Bicentennial project,the move and the construction of a visitors' center and archival and curatorial space allowed the Society to better serve the public and interpret the site where already by the 1960s a million people had visited. The changing ideas of the interpretation of historic properties and of evolving house museum installations can be traced in the rich written and visual record of the house kept by the Society. Similarly evolving ideas of restoration,repair and preservation are documented in the building itself and in the Lexington Historical Society's records.