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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 4
<br /> LEX.555
<br />principal sum. A. Bradford Smith also agreed to supply his father with a quart of milk a day, as much fruit from the farm as he
<br />wanted, wood for his fire and manure for his garden, stable room for a house and room for one carriage in the carriage house “next to the road.” He also agreed to lay a new floor in the kitchen in that part of the house Elias deeded to him and to paint and
<br />paper the kitchen and sitting room. Elias died only three weeks after the agreement was executed, and in May 1878 his executor recorded a deed of Elias Smith’s property to his son A. Bradford Smith. From this point forward the property was
<br />transferred in two parcels—the first being 6.5 acres (later 9 acres) on the west side of Blossom Street with the house and outbuildings, and the second being 37 acres with a barn and other buildings.5
<br /> A. Bradford Smith remained on the family farm until 1884, when he sold both parcels to Amos B. Harris of Everett for $5,000;
<br />Harris sold it about a year later to John Bender for $6250.6 Born in Bavaria in 1810, Bender came to the United Sates in 1834, married Martha Swan in Roxbury in 1839, and was a farmer living with his wife and son George C. in Hingham in 1860. Bender
<br />died in early May 1886, and his heirs sold the 26 Blossom Street parcels to the brothers George D. (1838-1902) and Lyman W. Estabrook (1829-92) for $4050 in March 1887.7
<br /> George and Lyman Estabrook were the sons of Solomon W. Estabrook (1815-89), who is cited in some sources as the owner of
<br />the farm though no deed was recorded in his name. The son of Attai Estabrook (1769-1836) of Hollis, New Hampshire, and his wife Polly Pierce, Solomon Estabrook was living and farming in Lexington by 1870. The 1880 census shows son Lyman, a cattle
<br />dealer, and George, a farm worker, in their parents’ household. Their mother, Elizabeth C. Blodgett Estabrook, died in 1881, and their father died in 1889. Lyman Estabrook died in 1892.
<br /> In October 1895 George D. Estabrook, his wife Emma S. Fowle Estabrook, and Lyman’s widow Harriet sold the two parcels of
<br />26 Blossom Street to Daniel Fuller Hutchinson (1845-1925) and his son Arthur (1870-1946).8 Hutchinson, born in Greenfield, New Hampshire, was working as a glazier in Lynn in 1869 when he married Mary Alice Fairfield, a native of Kennebunk Maine.
<br />He was a wholesale grocer in Somerville in 1880. And he was probably renting 26 Blossom Street when he acquired it, for the 1894 directory lists him on Blossom Street “near Allen.” Both he and son Arthur F. were listed as market gardeners in the 1899
<br />directory; the house is listed as located on “Blossom first from Concord Ave,” and also there were sons Charles Albert (1875-1947) and Edwin Waldo Hutchinson (1878-1963) and daughter Alice May (1873-1956). Charles worked as a clerk in Boston,
<br />Edwin worked for his father, and Alice taught school. The 1900 census lists the Hutchinson as a farmer on Blossom Street with wife Mary A., sons Charles, Edwin, and Arthur, all farm hands, three other relatives, and five boarding farm workers, one of them
<br />probably a related to his wife, three from Russia and listed only by their first names, and one from Germany.
<br />The 1906 Lexington map marks the house and the property on the east side of Blossom Street, incorrectly, as “P. F. Hutchinson,” and in 1910 the Hutchinson household was similarly large. Daniel and Mary Hutchinson shared the house with son
<br />Charles, a wholesale produce shipping clerk, Edwin and his wife Edith M. Cox (a native of Camden, Maine, whom he married in 1902), Mary A. Hutchinson’s sister Sarah, who had been part of the household since at least 1880, and four boarding servants,
<br />three of them men from Russia-Poland and one a maid. The 1913 directory lists Daniel and Edwin as market gardeners and florists and Arthur as a market gardener; Charles, still working in Boston, and Alice, still teaching, boarded with their father.
<br /> By 1918 Daniel Hutchinson and his wife moved to Allston or Brighton, and in the 1920 and 1930 censuses Arthur Hutchinson is
<br />listed on Blossom Street with his wife Clara (born in New Hampshire in 1871) and their daughter Doris; his brother Edwin is listed next to him with his wife and mother-in-law in a separate household. Both were wholesale florists by 1934; in 1942 Arthur
<br />was still farming at what was then 169 Blossom Street, while Edwin was still a wholesale florist living and working at 135, now 26, Blossom Street.
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<br /> 5 Agreement, 20 March 1878, between Elias Smith and A. Bradford Smith, MSD 1476:389; Lorenzo Marrett, Cambridge, executor will Elias Smith, to A. Bradford Smith, 10 May 1878, MSD 1476:390. 6 Smith, “Kite End,” 114, stated that when he sold it the farm had been in his family for 124 years (1760). See Albert B. Smith to Amos B. Harris, Everett, 28 May 1884, MSD 1668:127; Amos B. Harris, Everett, to John Bender, 8 May 1885, MSD 1703:199. 7 David H. and Louisa B. Daniels, Boston, and George C. Bender. Lexington, to George D. Estabrook and Lyman W. Estabrook, 25 March 1887, MSD 1809:58. A. Bradford Smith held a $1500 mortgage on the property; see MSD 1809:587. 8 George D. and Emma S. Estabrook and Harriet K. Estabrook to Daniel F. Hutchinson and Arthur F. Hutchinson, 31 October 1895, MSD 81:2318. See also George D. Estabrook and Lyman W. Estabrook to Baxter E. Perry, 12 September 1887, MSD 1815:435, and Baxter E. Perry, Medford, to Emma C. Estabrook and Harriet K. Estabrook, 12 September 1887, MSD 1815:436. In 1900 George Estabrook was a janitor living with his wife Emma in another part of town; after his death Emma boarded first at 470 Massachusetts Avenue and then, by 1913, at 10 Muzzey Street.
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