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INVENTORY FORM CONTINUATION SHEET Town Property Address Lexington 14 Glen Rd. South MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. MASSACHUSETTS ARCHIVES BUILDING 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD 679 BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS 02125 HISTORICAL NARRATIVE (continued) When Benjamin Muzzey died his debts amounted to almost$19,000;his widow lost the house through a mortgage foreclosure in 1859 but it was bought back almost immediately by her son David W. Muzzey(1833-1913). In the 1880s the latter began to develop the Muzzey land in the Sherman/Grant/Sheridan streets and Oakland St. areas, selling it off as houselots. In the late 19th century this house, which the Muzzeys called the Homestead,had gardens and fruit trees on the south side and a stable at the rear. A large red cattle barn was further back at the base of the hill. Late 19th-century photographs show the house with no dormers,and an 1898 plan and the family memoir indicate that there were several ells on the north end. In 1913, soon after David W. Muzzey's death,the Edison Corporation asked to buy the houselot as a site for a new substation. After much deliberation,the family decided to sell the land and move the house to some Muzzey land up the hill on a street, now Glen Rd. South, that David Muzzey had opened in 1912. The moving was directed by Charles DeVeau, a building contractor who lived nearby on Sherman St. (see 2 Sherman St. [MHC#676] form), and the actual work done by the Ellis Company of Boston. The site on the hill was prepared so that the house would be aligned exactly as it had been on Massachusetts Ave., which is why the rear of the house now faces Glen Rd. South. To ready the house for moving, the rear ells were cut off, the barn torn down, and the house cut in half crosswise just north of the entries. Each half was moved on large wooden rollers,which photographs indicate rolled on railroad tracks, pulled by a cable wound around a windlass and drawn by two horses. Moving the first half began in the middle of April; it took three weeks to get it across the railroad tracks, down Grant St., up Glen Rd. South, and onto the new foundation. The second half was then moved,the two halves joined, and after the interior was replastered, painted, and papered, the house was ready for occupancy by late August. The house continued to be occupied by the children of David W. Muzzey, one of whom, David Saville Muzzey(b. 1870), became a noted historian and the author of a well-known text book on U.S. history, until 1979 when Clifford Muzzey (1886-1984) sold the house to its present owners. BIBLIOGRAPHY and/or REFERENCES (continued) Lexington Valuation Lists. 1830-1838. Middlesex Registry of Deeds. Deeds, Plans. Cambridge, MA. 598: 463; 827: 413; Pl. Bk. 65, Pl. 12; Pl. Bk. 188, Pl. 31. Muzzey, Helen. Story of the Homestead. In possession of Kathy Mockett and John Oberteuffer, Lexington, MA. Worthen, Edwin B. Notes on buildings burned,torn down, and moved. "Houses"file,Worthen Collection. Cary Library, Lexington, Mass. #34