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INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET LEXINGTON 72 LOWELL ST.
<br /> MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
<br />220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125
<br />Continuation sheet 4
<br /> LEX.658
<br />Alterations to secondary partitions in the house have been, more recently, affected by the present owners, who have installed
<br />modern bathrooms in addition to undertaking extensive alterations to the ca. 1885 wing.
<br /> HISTORICAL NARRATIVE
<br />Researched & written by Kathryn Grover In 1785 Reuben Reed (1747-about 1800) acquired 66 acres of land in East Lexington, three adjoining parcels that had been part of the William Cutler farm and included a “mansion house and barn.”1 Cutler (1717-81) was the son of James and Elizabeth Whitmore Cutler of Cambridge, and he had owned land in East Lexington since 1742, when he acquired 12 acres that had been owned by the late physician William Russell. Cutler bought additional parcels in the same area in 1758 and 1768, including 20 woodland acres that his father had owned at his death in 1756. His great-grandfather, the immigrant James Cutler (1606-94), is said to have built one of the first houses in Lexington and died in Lexington, but his father, also James (1687-1756), died in Menotomy, then a village in Cambridge and now the town of Arlington. Deeds always record that William Cutler lived in Cambridge, and both a Cambridge history and Cutler genealogy state that he lived with his father at Menotomy; he was an affluent butcher (as deeds usually record it), farmer, and innkeeper, and “accumulated a handsome property,” a nephew later recalled. None of the Lexington parcels he acquired had buildings on them, but whether William Cutler built the “mansion house” that Reuben Reed acquired has not been determined. Historian William Richard Cutter maintained that Reuben Reed himself built “the old colonial dwelling house” in 1789.2 Reuben Reed was a son of Jacob Reed (1716-1805) of Woburn and lived at what was locally known as the “Duren place” near the Woburn-Lexington border, property his father Timothy had inherited from his father George, who had come to America with his parents in 1635. In 1773 Reuben Reed married Elizabeth Barron at Woburn, and by 1785 they settled on the Lowell Street property. In his will Reed left his wife use of half of his real estate while she lived, along with some livestock and furniture, and he bequeathed the rest of the estate to his nephew and namesake Reuben Reed (1792-1864), son of his younger brother Isaac (1756-1848). Isaac Reed had married Susanna Munroe of Lexington in 1780 or 1781, and according to one family history the couple moved then from Woburn to Lexington. But no deed transferring land from Isaac to his son Reuben was recorded. And the same family history states that the younger Reuben worked for his own father and his uncle Reuben, “with whom he lived from early youth. After his uncle’s death in 1800 he continued to run the farm for the widow until her death in 1817. The farm came to him and he followed farming on the place during his active life. His farm consisted of one hundred and sixty-five acres. He had excellent orchards and manufactured cider extensively; his cider mill is still standing on the homestead in Lexington.”3 The elder Reuben Reed is listed in the 1790 census, and the 1798 federal direct tax listing valued his house at $800; he then owned more than 71 acres. At his death his estate included 66 acres in three parcels, the first being the 42-acre “Hous Lot” on the west side of Lowell Street, valued at $840, the second being 12 acres across Lowell Street, and the third 12 acres of pasture. He also owned a 12.5-acre woodlot and a 120-acre pasture, the latter with John Stone. The “hous” on the first parcel was estimated to be worth $800, the milk house $200, the “new barn” $200, the old barn $100, and various outbuildings together $8. Reed’s widow Elizabeth’s half-share included the 42-acre house lot, the east end of the house “with a privilege to smoke bacon in the chimney made for that purpose,” the new barn except for the horse stable, half of the milk house and other buildings, and four acres of pasture. In 1800 Elizabeth Reed is listed in the census in Lexington with five persons in her household. Her name does not appear as a householder in the 1810 census; the only relative listed in the town was Isaac Reed, her late husband’s brother and the younger Reuben’s father, with seven in his household but no females her age. Perhaps she had moved by then, and perhaps Isaac had come to live with his son on his brother’s Lowell Street farm. In 1820 Isaac and his son Reuben are listed in separate but consecutive households. In 1824 Reuben Reed married Mary N. Willard of Lexington, and in 1830 his household and his father’s (though it could have been the household of his half-brother Isaac, born in 1781) are again enumerated one after the other. In 1840 only Reuben Reed, with six in his household, was listed before Oliver Winship, who owned a Lowell Street farm just south of Reed’s. The 1850 census lists Reuben Reed as a 58-year-old “yeoman” with $5500 in real property, and his household included his wife, their adult sons Reuben Willard (b. 1825) and Josiah Haskell (1827-90), and three boarders—one Irish
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<br />1 Thomas Brooks, Medford, administrator estate William Cutler, Cambridge, to Reuben Reed, Lexington, 1 September 1785, MSD 92:120. 2 William Richard Cutter, Historic Homes and Places and Genealogical and Personal Memoirs Relating to the Families of Middlesex County,
<br />Massachusetts (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Co., 1908), 3:116-18. 3 Cutter, Historic Homes, 3:116-18. Elizabeth Reed’s death is not recorded in Lexington.
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