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INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET LEXINGTON 26 BLOSSOM ST.
<br /> MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
<br />220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125
<br />Continuation sheet 3
<br /> LEX.555
<br /> HISTORICAL NARRATIVE Researched and written by Kathryn Grover The house now numbered 26 Blossom Street was built after 10 March 1718/19 on 40 acres Thomas Underwood (1655-1742/43) of Lexington deeded to his son Joseph.1 The early history of the Underwood family in Massachusetts is confused in both family and local genealogies, but it appears that Thomas Underwood may have been the son of the immigrant Thomas who came to the New World about 1660; the other branches of the Lexington family came first to Hingham in the 1630s. The birth and death dates of son Joseph are not known, and nothing has so far been learned about his life in Lexington.2 In February 1760 Joseph Underwood sold twelve acres of woodland and pasture land with “one Mansion House” to Josiah Smith of Waltham.3 The deed cites two of the same abutters as the 1718/19 deed. This Joseph Underwood was likely the son of earlier grantee Joseph Underwood and probably the man who died in late April of the same year. Josiah Smith (1724-84) was the son of Joseph Smith (born 1677) and Mary Richard (1680-1765) and had married Sarah Francis at Medford in 1750; after her death he married Hannah Brown of Waltham, in 1758. He served Lexington as a selectman for five years between 1771 and 1777 and as assessor for five years between 1770 and 1780. After Josiah Smith’s death the property passed to his eldest son Josiah Smith Jr. (1753-1826) who like his father had served in the Revolution (the son at Ticonderoga); in 1777 he married Polly Barber, the daughter of a captain in the British Army. Josiah Smith Jr. is listed in Lexington census from 1790 to 1820, and in 1823 he sold all of his South Lexington real estate to his son Elias Smith (1792-1878) for $1500.4 The first tract was described as the 6-acre “hill pasture” on the west side of Blossom Street with a house, a shop, and a shed; across the road was a 29-acre lot with a barn standing on it. Elias Smith had married Harriet Hastings in 1819, and he is listed in his own household in the 1830 and 1840 Lexington censuses. In 1850 he was 58 years old, owned $5,000 in real property, and lived with his wife Harriet, their sons Everett Elias (born 1827) and Albert Bradford (born 1829), and a New Hampshire-born teenage boarder. The agricultural census schedules for 1850 credit Elias Smith with 40 improved acres and a farm worth $4000; his older brother Josiah Smith (born 1789) had 35 acres in all, and both had more cattle than most: Elias Smith had five dairy cows and three other cattle, while Josiah owned seven milk cows. In 1855 both Elias Smith and his son Albert B. were living on the farm with George E. Whittum, the daughter of Elias’s daughter Sarah, and an Irish immigrant farm worker. In 1860 the farm was valued at $5,000 in the population schedules and $4,000 in the agricultural schedules. Whittum was still part of the household, while Elias’s sons Everett E. and A. Bradford were enumerated next to them, Everett described as a farm worker. In 1870 Elias and Harriet Smith lived in the house with widowed daughter Sarah Whittum and her son George, by then a hotel clerk, and the 1875 Lexington map attaches Elias Smith’s name to the house on this site. Harriet Hastings Smith died in 1876 and Elias two years later. A few months before his death Elias and his son A. Bradford signed an agreement in which son A. Bradford could acquire his father’s farm for $3500 as long as Elias was permitted to live for the rest of his life in the north end of the house, including the parlor and bedroom in the main house and being the “tenement” that George Whittum had earlier occupied. A. Bradford Smith was given a year from Elias’s death to pay the stated purchase price, and he agreed to pay 6 percent interest on the money quarterly to his father and, if necessary for his comfort, some of the
<br /> 1 Thomas Underwood, Lexington, to Joseph Underwood, Lexington, 10 March 1718/19, MSD 19:163. This is the only recorded deed to a Joseph Underwood in Lexington between 1704 and 1726. 2 He is apparently not the Joseph Underwood (1681-1761), often cited as the son of Joseph and Elizabeth Underwood, who moved to Westford probably by 1750 and died there. Howard J. Banker, The Underwood Families of America (New Era Printing Co., 1913), does not state that this Joseph ever lived in Lexington. It is possible that the Joseph Underwood who died in Westford in 1761 was actually the son of Thomas Underwood, not Joseph Underwood. A. Bradford Smith, “Kite End,” Proceedings of Lexington Historical Society 2 (1900), 112-14, states that the house was “formerly owned by Joshua Underwood,” but no recorded deeds were made to Joshua in Lexington between 1713 and 1727. Joshua Underwood, born in 1683, was a younger brother of Joseph (1681-1761) and lived in Sherborn. The March 1984 MHC inventory form for 26 Blossom cites a younger Joshua Underwood (1724-75), son of Joseph (1681-1761) but notes that the deed was too early to have been this Joshua Underwood. See also Charles Hudson, History of the Town of Lexington, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, from Its
<br />First Settlement to 1868 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1913), 2:714-715, which may also contain errors. 3 Joseph Underwood, Lexington, to Josiah Smith, Waltham, 13 February 1760, MSD 57:353. This Joseph Underwood’s estate was hopelessly mired in debt and still being probated in the early 1800s.
<br />4 Josiah Smith to Elias Smith, 18 January 1823, MSD 246:362. Josiah Smith had earlier sold 3 acres bordering his land to son Elias in January 1816 for $210 (MSD 221:437).
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