|
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET LEXINGTON 70 EAST STREET
<br /> MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
<br />220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125
<br />Continuation sheet 3
<br /> LEX.710
<br />recorded. In 1783, according to Lexington historian Charles Hudson, John Harrington moved to Deering, New Hampshire, but
<br />there is no record of him there in the 1790 census. Judging by the ages and genders of the John Harrington household in Lexington in 1790, he appears to have moved back to his native place by then. And in the same year he effectively mortgaged
<br />the same parcel he acquired from his father (in this deed 84 acres including a “Mansion House” and a barn) to his father with the proviso that he pay Henry 6.13.4 “as yearly rent” as long as Henry lived. 3 No recorded deed has been found in which either
<br />Henry or John Harrington transferred this property to Joseph Fiske, and in fact “Doct Joseph Fisk” (not identified as senior or junior; both were physicians) already owned land abutting the parcel Henry Harrington sold to his son in 1774. Both Harrington
<br />deeds exclude from the parcel four acres owned by Henry’s nephew Moses Harrington (1749-1821); Moses sold that tract, also abutting land of Joseph Fiske Jr., to Joseph Fiske Jr. in April 1791.
<br /> There are several possibilities for the origin of the 70 East Street property. In 1715 Lexington physician Robert Fiske (1680-
<br />1752), the father of Joseph Fiske Sr. (1726-1808), acquired two tracts “above the 8 mile line” from Lexington housewright John Johnson that appears to have been in this part of town.4 In 1757, five years after his death, five of Robert Fiske’s children sold
<br />that part of the homestead that had been set off to his widow Mary, “now in the peaceable possession of the said Joseph Fisk,” to their brother Joseph Fiske Sr.5 However, this dwelling was probably 63 Hancock Street (LEX.735), which Hudson dated
<br />without documentation to 1732. In 1729 John Harrington (1684-1750), Henry and Moses Harrington’s father, sold Robert Fiske twenty acres bordered by a highway, his own land, and the land of Daniel Tidd. This 20-acre parcel was one of six that Robert
<br />Fiske owned at his death and is called “the Harrington Lot” in his probate record. The probate court set off £1235.6.8 worth of Robert Fiske’s real estate—including two rooms and the cellar in the west part of the house on a 44.5-acre homestead lot—to
<br />Robert Fiske’s widow Mary, the 30-acre “Symonds Lot” and a meadow in Woburn to eldest son Robert, and the rest of the real estate, valued at £2044.13.4 and including the Harrington lot, to son Joseph, who succeeded to his father’s medical practice.6
<br />Joseph Fiske Sr. had married in Hepzibah Raymond in 1751, the year before his father died, and he is known to have lived and carried on his medical practice in the 63 Hancock Street homestead through the Revolution. The real estate that the Fiskes were
<br />acquiring at the time may have had pre-existing houses on them, but 70 East Street does not appear to have been one of them.7 Joseph Fiske, Jr. likely built the house around the time he married Elizabeth Stone (1767-1849) on July 31, 1794
<br /> According to his obituary, Joseph Fiske, Jr. was a young man at the battle of Lexington, not quite twenty-three years of age. He
<br />assisted his father tending to wounded soldiers on that day. He studied medicine and surgery with his father, and in later years with Dr. John Warren and his son, Surgeon J. C. Warren. He was commissioned as a surgeon's mate in the First Massachusetts
<br />of Foot in 1777; he was made full surgeon April 17, 1779, and served in the Continental army for seven years. He was present at the surrender of Burgoyne in 1777 and of Cornwallis in 1781. Fiske was one of the original founders of the Middlesex Medical
<br />Association, now the Massachusetts Medical Society, and one of the original members of the Order of the Cincinnati. His son took his place in the society at his death, and after the son's death it was conveyed to his grandson. Joseph Fiske, Jr. also was a
<br />member of the Bunker Hill Monument Association. He practiced his profession for nearly forty years in Lexington after the close of the war and was known for his treatment of the smallpox, and he was among the first physicians to make use of vaccinations.
<br /> mentioned could have been Henry Sr. (1711/12-91) or Jr. (1737-54). No recorded deeds to or from John Fiske of Lexington from about 1745 to 1790 have so far been located. 3 Henry Harrington to John Harrington, 10 June 1774, MSD 83:73; John Harrington, cordwainer, to Henry Harrington, 19 June 1790, MSD 104:66. Both deeds identify the relation of grantor and grantee. In 1774 John Harrington paid £400 for the parcel; in 1790 John’s mortgage deed was for £100 and ten shillings. The Harrington genealogy appears in Hudson, History of Lexington, 2:273-88. 4 John Johnson, Lexington, housewright, to Robert Fiske, 31 December 1715, MSD 18:42. 5 Robert Fisk, Woburn, physician, Jonathan Fisk, John Fisk and David Fisk, John Buckman of Lexington, housewright, and his wife Mary, Lydia Wilson, Lexington, widow, to Joseph Fisk, physician, Lexington, 25 April 1757, MSD 57:333. 6 Robert Fiske died intestate. In their 23 January 1753 inventory, appraisers appointed by the probate court valued his real property at £3706. His homestead lot was estimated to be worth £1780, the house on the lot £700, and the barn on the lot £200. The Harrington lot, described here as bounded on the northwest by a “town way,” northeast by Moses Harrington, southeast by Henry Harrington, and southwest by Daniel Tidd, was judged to be worth £600. The appraisers found that Robert Fiske had given his daughter Mary £100 in 1738 (she married John Buckman in 1739) and Lydia the same amount in 1742 (the date of her marriage to James Wilson is not recorded); son Robert had received £150.7.8. 7 Between 1765 and 1790 Joseph Fiske and his son acquired property bordering their own from Jonas Parker (1721/22-75) and the estates of Parker and his son Jonas Parker Jr. (1753-83). Thomas and Marsha Crage, Billerica, administrators estate Jonas Parker Jr., Lexington, to Joseph Fiske Jr., 1 April 1790, MSD 106:64, conveyed five acres of mowing and tillage land in two parcels, the second bordering Fiske’s land and including 2/3 of the “mansion house” and 2/3 of the barn on the 2-acre property. See also Jonas Parker to Joseph Fisk, 5 March 1765, MSD 64:320, and John Bridge, administrator estate Jonas Parker, Lexington, to Dr. Joseph Fiske Jr., 4 November 1788, MSD 106:62.
|