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INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET LEXINGTON 5 HARRINGTON ROAD
<br /> MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
<br />220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125
<br />Continuation sheet 4
<br />B, AC LEX.55
<br />In July and September 1861, Bowen’s sons Charles B. and George D. enlisted in the Union Army, Charles as a fifer in Company
<br />B of the 18th Massachusetts Infantry and George a a private in Company F of the 22nd Massachusetts. Charles became ill in October 1861 and from that point was rarely able to serve; he died in Lexington of consumption in August 1862. George served
<br />his full three-year term as the regiment served at Bull Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, the Battle of the Wilderness, Petersburg and some thirteen other battles.
<br /> In early June 1869 Bowen Harrington deeded to his married daughter Mary Ward Swan the former Nathan Harrington house that
<br />he had acquired from the Nathan Harrington estate in 1844.6 Bowen died intestate two weeks later, and his probate records offer no inventory of his real property, nor was any deed between Bowen and his son George recorded. In 1870 George was
<br />clerking a grain store and living with his sister Mary, brother–in-law Gershom Swan, their two children, his sister Nancy, and an Irish-born domestic servant. Whether they were in 5 Harrington Road or the former Nathan Harrington house is unclear from the
<br />census. Swan is listed as owning $16,000 in real property, while George is shown with $2000 in personal property only.
<br />In November 1870 George D. Harrington married Lexington native Josephine Augusta Butters, and the 1880 census lists them and their two daughters Alice Munroe and May Swan, and a domestic in their own household, with his sister Mary Swan’s
<br />household next door. George Harrington was a clerk in Boston for 25 years, but in 1897 he became the town treasurer and remained in that position until a few years before he died; he also served as town clerk from 1901 to 1910. The 1906 directory
<br />shows him at 4 Elm Avenue, now 5 Harrington Road. Daughter Alice married Cambridge physician Ralph Cleaves Wiggin in 1908, and from that time until he died George Harrington lived at 5 Harrington Road with his wife Josephine and daughter May.
<br />At both the time of his fifty-sixth wedding anniversary and his eighty-fifth birthday, the Boston Globe noted that George Harrington had lived all his life in the house facing Lexington Common in which he had been born.7
<br /> George Dennis Harrington died in 1929, and his widow Josephine remained in the house with her daughter May until she died in
<br />November 1937.8 Oddly, Josephine was listed in the 1942 directory with her daughter May at what was by then 5 Harrington Road. May Swan Harrington died in 1948, and the property was acquired by Carolyn B. Phelps.9 Phelps was the widow of
<br />Duane F. Phelps of Arlington, who when he died in 1945 was treasurer of cardboard box manufacturer Shaw-print of Lowell and earlier president of New England Baking Company.10 In April 1949 Phelps sold 5 Harrington Road to optometrist Howard William
<br />Foley (1913-98), who lived in the house with his wife Mary Lillian Hart Foley (1912-77) and, at least at the time of her death, his mother Jane Maria Arey Foley (1885-1973).11
<br /> In 1980 Howard Foley sold 5 Harrington Road to Thomas E. and Carla V. Fortman, who were the owners of record in 2021.12
<br /> BIBLIOGRAPHY and/or REFERENCES Ancestry.com Boston, MA. Massachusetts Historical Commission. MACRIS on-line historic resource inventory. Cambridge, MA. Middlesex Registry of Deeds. Lexington, MA. Cary Library. Archives & Collections. Lexington, MA. Lexington Historical Society. Archives & Collections; includes M.J. Canavan Papers. Lexington, MA. Town of Lexington. Assessors' Office. Valuation Lists. Lexington, MA. Town of Lexington. Town Reports. 1849-present. Bliss, Edward P. “The Old Taverns of Lexington,” Proceedings of the Lexington Historical Society. 1 (1889).
<br /> 6 Bowen Harrington to Mary Ward Swan, 4 June 1869, MSD 1085:393. 7 “Lexington Couple Married 56 Years,” Boston Globe, 18 November 1926, 18; “G. D. Harrington, Civil War Veteran, 85 Today,” ibid., 17 July 1928, 2. 8 “Mrs. Josephine Harrington,” Boston Globe, 13 March 1939, 2. 9 The deed recording this sale is not accessible on the Middlesex South Registry of Deeds website, nor is the subsequent deed between Phelps and Howard W. Foley, 12 April 1949, MSD 7146:373. 10 “Rites Tomorrow for D. F. Phelps,” Boston Herald, 17 July 1945, 9. 11 Boston Globe, 17 June 1973, 51. 12 Howard W. Foley to Thomas E. and Carla V. Fortman, 3 April 1980, MSD 13938:46; Thomas E. and Carla V. Fortman, 5 Harrington Road, to Thomas E. and Carla V. Fortman, 25 March 1997, MSD 27166:255. The house stands on Lot D of “Plan of Land in Lexington, Mass.,” 18 April 1961, MSP 9815:529, which is not accessible on the Middlesex South Registry of Deeds website.
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