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INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET LEXINGTON 5 HARRINGTON ROAD MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 3 B, AC LEX.55 Attorney and local historian Michael J. Canavan determined that in 1763 “Sam Jones” sold blacksmith Daniel Harrington (1739-1818) 4.50 acres of land bounded on the southeast by the “common lands” or the highway, northeast by Jonas Clarke and Abigail Harrington, southwest by William Munroe, and northwest by the eight-mile limit.1 Harrington built his blacksmith shop on the parcel as well as his own house (not extant) the 5 Harrington Road house, this last probably in 1794 and certainly by 1798, when his son Levi Harrington (1760-1846) came to occupy it.2 According to Canavan Daniel Harrington bought 73 acres from John Muzzey in 1784 that extended from “the back of the estates facing on Elm Street” beyond the eight-mile limit. The 1798 federal direct tax listings credit Daniel Harrington with one house, and in 1800 and 1810 he and his wife are shown with two others in their house next to the household of his son Levi. Daniel Harrington died in 1818, and his will left cash and shares of his personal estate to his four married daughters and his real estate to his “beloved sons” Levi and Nathan (1762- 1837).3 The 1820 census lists Levi Harrington and Nathan Harrington consecutively, and in 1830 Nathan Harrington, his son Nathan (1792-1843), and Levi Harrington are listed in consecutive households. In 1830 Nathan Harrington sold his son and namesake two parcels—half of 0.25 acre and half of the buildings “near the meetinghouse” that bordered Levi Harrington’s land, and 19 acres nearby.4 When Nathan Harrington Jr. died in 1844, the administrator of his estate and his widow Martha Ingersoll Mead Harrington (1797-1852) sold to Levi Harrington’s youngest son Bowen (1803-69) the three-acre parcel with its buildings near the meetinghouse and bordering Lexington Common and the Levi Harrington land. Bowen Harrington executed a mortgage deed on the property with Nathan’s widow and his estate administrator at the same time.5 In that way Bowen Harrington came to own both his father’s and his uncle’s Elm Street/Harrington Road houses. Bowen Harrington was born in August 1803 and spent his early career as a grocer and merchant in the North End of Boston. In 1832 he married Elizabeth Price Ward (1811-63) of Boston, and the couple had five children who lived into adulthood—Mary Ward (born) 1834, who married Gershom Swan in 1864; Charles Bowen (1837-62), who died of disease during his Civil War service; William Henry (1840-63), and George Dennis (1843-1929), whose middle name honored his uncle Dennis (1796-1840), who died at the age of forty-four. He was a farmer, and the 1850 census lists him at what is now 5 Harrington Road with $7500 in real estate in a household with his wife Elizabeth, their four children, and two Irish immigrants, one a laborer and the other a domestic. They shared the house with Bowen’s older, unmarried sister Nancy (1788-1871), her cousin Abijah Harrington (the son of Nathan and Elizabeth Phelps Harrington), and three boarders, one a blacksmith and two butchers. The 1850 agricultural census lists Bowen Harrington with 17 improved acres, 8 unimproved acres, and a farm value of $1700. By 1860 he had 25 improved acres and 6 unimproved acres, and the value of his farm had risen to $6000. 1 S. Jones to Daniel Harrington, 14 October 1765, MSD 65:20 is not currently accessible online at the Middlesex South Registry of Deeds website. The date in the index volumes available on FamilySearch.org may be the recorded date, not the date on which the deed was made, so the deed may be dated 1763. 2 M. J. Canavan Papers, Lexington Historical Society, 323-24 (stamped page numbers), 31-32 (typescript page numbers) states, “In regard to the house on Elm St. West of the Common. Dan Harrington lived in a house that was torn down a few years ago and which stood between the present Swan-Harrington house and Miss Gould’s. He was a blacksmith and his shop stood between his house and the house Miss Gould now lives in. . . . Dan built the house where Mr. Swan and Geo. Harrington lived; in 1798 Levi Harrington moved into it./ When Dan Harrrington bought this 4 ½ acres in 1763, Abigail Harrington owned the land where Miss Gould lives and she must have been the Widow Harrington in whose house that school was kept when the new school house was being built about that time, 1763.” Canavan did not know who Abigail Harrington was, but she was probably Abigail Marble Blodgett Harrington (1726-1820), the widow of Ebenezer Blodgett when she married Henry Harrington (1711/12-91). Henry Harrington and his first wife, Sarah Laughton, had a son Jonathan (1744/45-75), who married Ruth Fiske of Lexington in 1766 and died in the Lexington Common battle. Ruth Fiske Harrington lived in the Abigail Harrington house in 1775, according to Canavan, and married John Smith of Boston in 1777 and sold the house to her brother, “Dr. Fiske” (possibly Joseph, 1726-1808). The 1975 MHC building inventory form for 5 Harrington Road states that the house was built by Loring and was later the home of Levi Harrington. The current owner of the dwelling owns a copy of the 1794 contract to build the house. 3 Harrington’s children certified on 23 October 1818 that they approved their father’s will asked that his personal estate not be inventoried because it was “very small.” 4 Nathan Harrington to Nathan Harrington Jr., 23 March 1830, MSD 296:284. 5 William Chandler, administrator estate Nathan Harrington, to Bowen Harrington, 2 April 1844, MSD 447:193; Martha I Harrington to Bowen Harrington, 2 April 1844, MSD 447:194; Bowen Harrington to William Chandler, guardian of Caroline M. and Elvira M. Harrington, 2 April 1844, MSD 447:193 (the grantees on this mortgage deed being the minor children of Nathan and Martha Harrington); Bowen Harrington, to Martha I Harrington, 3 April 1844, MSD 447:197.