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Dedham Mass.

The Dangerous Wit and Wisdom of Nathaniel Ames

Nathaniel Ames had a wit that nearly got him sent to prison. Ames, a physician and innkeeper, also published an almanac. He infused the astronomical and weather predictions with his caustic wit and dry humor.

When nothing seemed likely to happen on a given date, he would fill the void in his almanac with a wisecrack, generally aimed at colonial society’s more serious minded:

Some examples:

May 22.

Some materials about this time are hatched for the clergy to debate on.

November 9.

These aspects show violent winds and in winter storms of driving snow; mischiefs by the Indians, if no peace; and among us, feuds, quarrels, bloody-noses, broken pates if not necks.

December 15.

This cold, uncomfortable weather

Makes Jack and Jill lie close together.”

February 24-27.

If you fall into misfortunes, creep through those bushes which have the least briers.

July 16-27.

Every man carries a fool in his sleeve; with some he appears bold, with some he only pops out now and then, but the wise keep him hid.

September 12-16.

To some men their country is their shame; and some are the shame of their country.

Nathaniel Ames’ sign redrawn in 1891

Yet Ames’ light-hearted nature had a querulous side, as well. Ames, one of many colonial humorists, lived in Bridgewater and Dedham, Mass., from 1705 to 1764, and he frequently called on the courts to settle slights and disputes. And he particularly enjoyed pricking lawyers with his wit, as in this couplet:

The lawyers’ tongues they never freeze,

If warmed with honest clients fees.

He Goes Too Far

However, he took his humor too far in one case. Ames had to sue members of his wife’s family after she died. She had owned the tavern that the couple operated, and her family claimed that they should inherit it. After a lengthy trial, Ames won the property, but two judges had argued against his position.

The Ames Tavern as drawn in 1891 based on the memory of Dedham’s oldest resident.

To mock the judges, he erected a sign that caricatured the judges. In it, nine of the judges who sided with him were pictured studying law books. Two, however, were facing the other way, ignoring the law.

Paul Dudley, chief justice of Massachusetts’ highest court, was one of the judges pictured ignoring the law. He heard about the sign and ordered the sheriff to arrest Ames and seize the sign.

Ames, however, learned of the plan to have him arrested and pulled the sign down. Unable to resist a parting shot, however, he replaced it with a Biblical quotation from the Book of Matthew:

“A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given unto it.”

After Ames’ death, his son Nathaniel continued with his almanac, though with less vitriol and greater success.

This story was updated in 2022.

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6 of the Oldest Houses in New England

To make a claim for the oldest houses in New England inevitably invites controversy. The region has plenty of very old houses, but few of them survive intact. Some took several years to build. How does one date them, then: From the start of construction, or completion?

Some very old houses have been remodeled over the years. One in Rhode Island burned down during King Philip’s War, while a wealthy pop star restored and modernized another. One is the oldest stone house, and one is the oldest timber frame house.

The New England Historical Society has surveyed the field of oldest houses, and we’ve come up with six that have valid claims as the oldest in each state. We realize some may beg to differ….

Henry Whitfield House

People claim the Henry Whitfield House in Guilford as the oldest house in Connecticut and the oldest stone house in New England. You can find it at 248 Old Whitfield Street, down the street from the town green.

Puritans built it in 1639 for their minister, Henry Whitfield, a descendant of Geoffrey Chaucer.

The first settlers of Guilford began building the home in September 1639, shortly after they arrived. But they started too late in the year, and they only finished the great hall and north fireplace. They completed the house in the summer of 1640 with the help of the Menunkatuck Indians, who carried stone from nearby quarries on barrows.

The walls measure nearly two feet thick, held together with mortar made of yellow clay and crushed oyster shells.

Henry Whitfield, his wife Dorothy Shaeffe Whitfield and their nine children lived in the house. The Puritans also used it for religious services before they built their church, as a fort and as a meetinghouse for Town Meeting.

In 1660, Roman Catholics used the house as a chapel.

The owner remodeled the house in 1868, and it opened to the public in 1899 as Connecticut’s first museum. It was restored in 1902-04 and in the 1930s.

Today the Henry Whitfield House is a museum. For more information about visiting, click here.

John Bray House

The John Bray House in Kittery qualifies as one of the oldest in Maine because it was built on the site where wealthy shipwright John Bray first built a dwelling in 1662. He also kept a home in England.

The current house, a 2-1/2 story wooden frame building, was probably not built before 1720. Parts of the original house were incorporated into it. It’s set on the south side of Pepperell Road (Maine State Route 103), on a site overlooking the Piscataqua River.

The Bray House is on the far left.

Daryl Hall of the pop duo Hall & Oates bought the house in 2008 and restored it, saving it from destruction. He later sold it for $1.6 million.

Hall saw an ad in the Newtown, Conn., Antiques and Arts Weekly, that said the house was up for auction. He sent his architect to look at it. Then he sent his assistant to buy it. After 15 minutes of bidding, he owned it.

Hall restores antique houses as a hobby. He restored houses in London and Upstate New York.

The Fairbanks House

Fairbanks House, photo courtesy Library of Congress

The Fairbanks House in Dedham, Mass., is said to be the oldest timber-framed house in North America. Jonathan and Grace Fairbanks, Puritans from Yorkshire, England, had the house built for themselves and their six children. Tree ring dating confirms the Fairbanks built the house in the late 1630s and early 1640s. English carpenters from East Anglia built the house, which never had a mortgage on it.

The house passed down to the Fairbanks family through eight generations, and the Fairbanks family still owns the property. One of Jonathan and Grace’s descendants, Charles Warren Fairbanks, served as Teddy Roosevelt’s vice president and had a city in Alaska (Fairbanks) named after him. Another Fairbanks, Jason, was hanged for murder in 1801.

The Fairbanks family frequently holds reunions in which they dress in Puritan costume.

Yale professor Abbott Lowell Cummings wrote “No other house of the mid-17th century in New England has survived in such unbelievable unspoiled condition.”

The Fairbanks House, now a historic house museum, opens May through October. For more information click here.

Richard Jackson House

The Richard Jackson House, New Hampshire’s oldest, sits across the Piscataqua River from the oldest house in Maine. Located at 76 Northwest St. in Portsmouth, Richard Jackson built it in 1664 in the English style, but Americanized with an extravagant use of wood.

Richard Jackson, a mariner, farmer and cooper, outlived his two sons, dying in 1718. The house was divided in 1727 among his daughter-in-law and her children. Five generations of men named Nathaniel Jackson owned and occupied the house from 1727 to 1897.

The fifth Nathaniel Jackson bequeathed the house to his daughter, Mary E. Jackson and her son, also named Nathaniel. They rented the house to an African-American couple, Clarence and Belle Tilley. She was believed to have come to New Hampshire via the Underground Railroad. The house in 1924 was sold to William Sumner Appleton, founder of the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities (now Historic New England). He allowed Belle to continue living there.

He restored the property, removing modern modification and replacing the windows with leaded diamond paned windows typical of the era. Appleton’s restoration became the basis for Historic New England’s preservation philosophy of keeping generations of changes intact.

The public may now visit the house, a museum. For information about visiting, click here.

Stephen Northup House

In 1645, Stephen Northup came from England at about the age of 15, and in 1660 he started building the house now at 99 Featherbed Lane in North Kingstown, R.I.

He first lived in Providence, where he served as town sergeant in 1660. Five years earlier Providence Town Meeting granted him 25 acres. Since he sold land in Providence in 1662, he probably finished the North Kingstown house that year and moved into it.

Most of the original house probably burned in King Philip’s War (1675-76), along with everything south of Providence. Northup then rebuilt the house, possibly with parts from the 1660 building. Additions were made around 1712 and 1850.

The southwestern portion of the home is original to the 1660 building standards with additions made around 1712 and 1850. The present home may have portions of its current form rooted in the year 1660.

Northup married, had six known children and lived until at least 1687. He built the first dam at the Gilbert Stuart home, according to a family researcher. The Northups owned or operated the gristmill there.

Stephen Northup’s great-grandson, Capt. Henry Northup, who freed his slave Mintus in 1797. Mintus took Northup as his last name, and had a freeborn son, Solomon Northup, the subject of the Academy Award winning film 12 Years a Slave.

Stephen Northup also has a descendant in Stephen Douglas, who famously debated Abraham Lincoln and lost to him in the 1860 election for U.S. president.

The Northup House now belongs to a private owner.

Mooar-Wright House

The oldest house in Vermont – or at least the oldest continuously occupied house — is believed to be the enigmatic Mooar-Wright House in Pownal, the far southwestern town in the state. No documentation exists of its early ownership. According to local legend, the house was built as a tavern by Charles Wright in 1762. Others speculate Dutch settlers built the house thinking it belonged to the New York colony.

People sometimes call the house the Defoe-Mooar-Wright House. Some historians believe John Defoe, a Loyalist imprisoned in 1776, built it. He escaped and fought on the side of the British at the Battle of Bennington. Patriots captured him again, but he escaped again to Canada. Other historians believe Charles Wright built the house in 1765.

The house has a Dutch frame around a typically English layout. In 2009, the Rev. Gregory Dickson bought the house intending to renovate it, according to the Bennington Banner. Its previous owner, Margaret Lillie, used part of the house as a law office. Both belong to the Pownal Historical Society.

Members of the Mooar family are the last owners anyone in Pownal can remember. They visited the home in the summer during the 1950s.

Photos: Henry Whitfield House By Dmadeo – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6013719; Stephen Northrup House By Swampyank at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20434112. Bray House By Jerrye & Roy Klotz, MD – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37099250. This story about New England’s oldest houses was updated in 2022.

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Madame Knight Rides the Post Road Home

Madame Knight was the name ultimately given to the 38-year-old adventuress who rode the Boston Post Road alone on horseback in 1704 from Boston to New York and back.

Women just didn’t do that then.

Her diary of the trip is an unrivaled account of the difficulties of travel in the early 18th century.

Map of Sarah Kemble Knight’s journey

Madame Knight

Sarah Kemble Knight left her home in Boston on Oct. 2, 1704, headed for New Haven. The daughter of Puritans, Thomas Kemble and Elizabeth Trerice, she was a 38-year-old widow with a daughter. Madame Knight assumed responsibility for her household, running a boarding house and copying legal documents.

She agreed to help settle her cousin’s estate. That meant a long horseback ride to New Haven along the Boston Post Road.

During her journey, she generally hired guides or accompanied the post rider to show her the way, as the road had no navigation aids. Connecticut then was a foreign country to the Massachusetts colonists, and Madame Knight had much to say about it.

She arrived in New Haven, but unfinished business forced her to go to New York. So on Dec. 6, 1704, she set out for New York after a two-month stay in New Haven.

Sarah Kemble Knight

She Loves New York

Madame Knight liked New York’s neat brick houses, pleasant manners and fashionable dress, and she left reluctantly on Dec. 21.

She set out for New Rochelle, where she would have been content to settle because of its “good handsome houses.” It also had “clean, good and passable roads.” She rode through Stamford to Norwalk, where she spent “the most perplexed night” she had ever had. In Fairfield, Conn., she noticed an abundance of sheep “whose very dung brings them great gain.” She noted the citizens of Fairfield paid their parson in sheep dung — grudgingly.

Madame Knight was kindly received in New Haven by her friends and relations. She commented favorably on Connecticut.

It is a plentiful Country for provisions of all sorts and its Generally Healthy. No one that can and will be diligent in this place need fear poverty nor the want of food and Rayment.

With the help of James Pierpont, the New Haven minister who founded Yale, Madame Knight finally came to an agreement in February on the distribution of her cousin’s estate.

James Pierpont

Homeward Bound

Her mission accomplished, she mounted her horse and crossed the river at New Haven over the ice and arrived at New London. There she stayed with Mr. Gurdon Saltonstall. Gov. Fitz-John Winthrop insisted she stay an extra day and take supper with him.

Gurdon Saltonstall

The next day she took the ferry to Groton with Winthrop’s daughters and others. That night she stayed in Stonington and had ‘Rost beef and pumpkin sause’ for supper. And then she encountered a terrifying river crossing:

…the next day wee come to a river which by Reason of Ye Freshetts coming down was swelled so high wee feared it impassable and the rapid stream was very terrifying–However we must over and that in a small Cannoo. Mr. Rogers assuring me of his good Conduct, I after a stay of near an how’r on the shore for consultation went into the Cannoo, and Mr. Rogers paddled about 100 yards up the Creek by the shore side, turned into the swift stream and dexterously steering her in a moment wee come to the other side as swiftly passing as an arrow shott out of the Bow by a strong arm. I staid on ye shore till Hee returned to fetch our horses, which he caused to swim over himself bringing the furniture in the Cannoo. But it is past my skill to express the Exceeding fright all their transactions formed in me.

Once Madame Knight made it across the river she was in Massachusetts, where she spent the night at an inn. The next day she had a difficult ride through the “sloughy ways thawed by the sun.”

Madame Knight Arrives Home

She met Capt. John Richards of Boston, who agreed to accompany her home. Eager to reach Boston, they rode harder than usual. Just as they reached Dedham, her horse dropped ‘as if dead’ while charging up a steep hill. She got another horse and they tried to reach Boston that night. The roads were still too sloughy and they stayed at an inn instead.

Boston around 1730,.

And then, on March 3, Madame Knight wrote in her journal:

…the next day being March 3d wee got safe home to Boston, where I found my aged and tender mother and my Dear and only Child in good health with open arms redy to receive me, and my Kind relations and friends flocking in to welcome mee and hear the story of my transactions and travail I having this day bin five months from home and now I cannot fully express my Joy and Satisfaction. But desire sincerely to adore my Great Benefactor for thus graciously carrying forth and returning in safety his unworthy handmaid.

This story last updated in 2022.

Image: Map of Madame Knight’s journey By Lindsay Anderson – http://puritansandpetticoats.blogspot.com, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=35843888.

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Jason Fairbanks Had Two Faces. One Killed Eliza Fales.

The issue is settled: Jason Fairbanks murdered Eliza Fales in 1801, but the story of exactly what happened has never been completely clear.

Two distinctly different views of 21-year-old Jason Fairbanks’ life still hold.

People most commonly view him as little more than a spoiled brat.

Others said he suffered a disability worsened by medical treatment, and that he tried hard to overcome it.

Jason Fairbanks

Jason Fairbanks was born during the American Revolution in 1780 to a prominent Puritan family in Dedham, Mass.

He did so poorly in school his parents suggested he should find a trade rather than attempting college.

“His proud spirit, indignant at the imaginary disgrace of using his hands in this way to gain a living, would not stoop so low,” recorded one newspaper.

Gravestone of Jason Fairbanks in the Old Village Cemetery in Dedham, Mass.

Rather, he carried on “aping the manners of a gentleman, at the expense of his virtuous parents’ labor — who used persuasion to no effect on their obdurate son to dissuade him from a liberal education.”

Failing at school, the Fairbanks sent their son to Wrentham Academy to prepare him for college.

Newspapers reported he was ‘frequently guilty of excess’ during his studies, which at the time were ‘imputed to juvenile indiscretions.’

On top of his generally poor attitude, Fairbanks had fallen in love with Eliza Fales. He insisted Eliza she should marry him. The more obsessed he got, the less he could focus on anything else.

“His attention was now chiefly devoted in writing love sonnets to his Dulcinea, and to conversing personally with her,” reported one newspaper.

Another Side of Jason Fairbanks

Love-struck, lazy, haughty and entitled. Was this Jason Fairbanks, or was his true nature very different?

Jason’s brother Ebenezer, in describing his brother, painted another portrait. At age 12, Jason had been vaccinated against smallpox and contracted the disease. Doctors subsequently treated him (probably with mercury), and he couldn’t use his frozen and withered right arm from the shoulder down.

Far from malingering, Ebenezer describes Jason working hard and exerting himself. He reached the point several times that his lungs began bleeding, and he suffered headaches, fatigue and fevers. He was weak and his health poor.

Jason Fairbanks pursued schooling despite his deficiencies, wrote Ebenezer, because it seemed the best way for him to find a job that would allow him to earn a living.

Eliza Fales

When it came to Eliza Fales, everyone agreed. Pretty, engaging and vivacious, people sometimes called her Betsy.

According to one news account, “Luxuriant auburn hair flowed in graceful ringlets around her well-turned shoulders, and neck and bosom might with alabaster vie.

“Her tapered waist, her glowing cheek, tinged with the crimson blush of virgin modesty, displayed the most happy assemblage of the carnation and lily that ever graced mortal form,” reported the newspaper in the overblown prose of the day.

Modest, unassuming, a smiling delight. No wonder if Jason fell in love with her. The two struck up a friendship, and they spent hours together. And whether they were more than friends or not is an open question.

On May 18, 1801 around noon Eliza went to a neighbor’s house hoping to recover a book the Faleses had loaned, The History of Lady Julia Mandeville. When her neighbor explained she hadn’t finished it, Eliza stayed awhile playing with a small child. Around 1 p.m., she left and went walking in a pasture.

It’s not clear whether Eliza and Jason planned to meet or not. Eliza’s friends did not care for Jason, and some said her father had banned him from their home. Her father, though, denied it.

Jason had told a friend he intended to marry Eliza, and if she refused he would ‘attempt her chastity.’

In the pasture, Jason produced a document his niece had drawn up for him: a phony marriage certificate. It showed Eliza and Jason as husband and wife. The cousin said Jason asked her to draw it up as a flirtatious jest.

The Murder

As to what happened next, we can only conjecture. At about 3 p.m., Jason turned up at the Fales’ home covered in blood. Eliza had killed herself and he had tried to do the same, but failed, he said.

In the pasture, Eliza’s father found her dying with numerous stab wounds and a slashed throat. Jason, too, had stab wounds and a slashed throat.

Fairbanks House, photo courtesy Library of Congress

He said she had slashed and stabbed herself when he told her they would never be married, and tore up the phony marriage certificate to drive home the point. The ripped document was, indeed, found next to Eliza’s body.

Eliza died. Jason did not. His story quickly came under suspicion, not least because the wounds to Eliza seemed defensive. She had several wounds on her back. It seemed unlikely she would have stabbed herself that way.

Eliza’s family said the girl had no romantic interest in Jason, so far as they knew.

Authorities arrested Jason Fairbanks.

The Trial

Newspapers from near and far covered the sensational trial. Massachusetts Attorney General John Sullivan, Revolutionary War hero and later governor, led the prosecution. Harrison Gray Otis and John Lowell, the patriarch of the Boston Lowells, represented Jason Fairbanks.

In the end, the court concluded that Fairbanks had committed the murder, and he was sent to the Dedham jail to await execution.

Fairbanks had friends, however, and a group of young men in August went to the Dedham jail, overpowered the jailer and released Fairbanks. Together with a friend, Henry Dukeham, Fairbanks headed west through Massachusetts and into New York. They made their way to upstate New York and arranged passage on a boat to take them north to Canada.

Just hours from freedom, the two young men decided to have breakfast, unconcerned about any danger.

Moses Holt found the two men as they were eating breakfast. Holt, from Hadley, Mass., had joined a three-man posse to track down Fairbanks. Holt, with a faster horse, had ridden ahead, and when he found Fairbanks and Dukeham he delayed them until the other men arrived.

Newspaper broadside depicting the hanging of Jason Fairbanks

End of the Story

Authorities hauled Jason Fairbanks back, not to the Dedham jail, but to a more secure jail in Boston. On the day ordered, Sept. 10, 1801, they took him to Dedham and hanged him. Thousands of people attended the gruesome event.

Afterwards, his family buried him in the same cemetery as Eliza.

The story, however, never died, inspiring books, such as The Report of the Trial of Jason Fairbanks, The Solemn Declaration of the Late Unfortunate Jason Fairbanks (written by Jason’s brother Ebenezer), and numerous newspaper broadsides from which this account is drawn.

Today, the Fairbanks house still stands in Dedham, the oldest house in Massachusetts and the oldest timber-framed house in North America. The Fairbanks family still owns the house, and frequently holds reunions in it.

Charles Fairbanks, Jason’s sixth cousin once removed, served as U.S. vice president under Teddy Roosevelt.

This story about Jason Fairbanks was updated in 2022. Tombstone of Jason Fairbanks By Slugger O'Toole – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=83405868.

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Sarah Kemble Knight Rides the Boston Post Road. Alone. In 1704.

In 1704, Sarah Kemble Knight made a famous journey on horseback from Boston to New Haven and then New York along the Boston Post Road. It was extremely unusual — and courageous — for an unescorted woman to travel such a distance in those days, and she kept a journal of the trip.

She was a 38-year-old schoolmistress and a widow. According to legend, she taught Benjamin Franklin and the Mather children, but historians believe it probably didn’t happen.

Sarah Kemble Knight told a witty, perceptive story in her journal about the hardships of travel in early 18^th century colonial America.

Sarah Kemble Knight, Traveler

In 1704, the Boston Post Road was little more than a crude path from Boston to New York. It had no markings, few bridges and primitive inns along the way. Travelers relied on the post riders who delivered the mail to escort them; otherwise, they couldn’t find the way.

On Oct. 2, 1704, Sarah Kemble Knight rode to Dedham, Mass., on horseback, expecting to meet the post rider. He didn’t show. She learned he stopped 12 miles short of the village. She went to the local tavern and found a guide, a local character named John, to take her to where the post rider was staying.

But not before her hostess tried to overcharge her. Sarah Kemble Knight refused her price, writing, “I would not be accessary to such extortion.”

The woman held forth for so long that Knight feared she was a Quaker, then a minority much reviled by the Massachusetts Puritans.

Dangers

Having finally agreed on a price, Sarah Kemble Knight and John set forth on an easy pace. As they rode, John warned her of the dangers of traveling at night.

A fog settled in as it got dark, and the two riders came to a thick swamp. Though the swamp “very much startled” Sarah Kemble Knight, she wrote that nothing dismayed John and they made it through.

Map of Sarah Kemble Knight’s journey

About an hour after they left the swamp, she wrote, they came to “Billinges,” where she would spend the night. Her guide dismounted and helped her down, then showed her the door and told her to go in. She did so gladly.

‘Never see a woman on the Rode…’

Madame Knight had not gone many steps into the room when a young lady, the family’s eldest daughter, interrogated her:

Law for mee–what in the world brings You here at this time a night? –I never see a woman on the Rode so Dreadfull late, in all the days of my versall life. Who are You? Where are You going? I’me scar’d out of my wits–with much now of the same Kind.

She stood aghast, preparing to reply, when John came in. Madame turned, roaring out, “Lawful heart, John,is it You?– how de do! Where in the world are you going with this woman? Who is she?”

John didn’t say anything, but sat down in the corner. She then turned to Sarah Kemble Knight, “andd fell anew into her silly questions, without asking mee to sit down.:

Sarah Kemble Knight Inks on Ye Transactions

Madame Knight told her she treated her very rudely, and she did not think it her duty to answer her unmannerly questions.

To stop the questioning, however, she said she came to meet the post the next day on her journey.

Miss star’d awhile, drew a chair, bid me sit, And then run upstairs and putts on two or three Rings, (or else I had not seen them before,) and returning, sett herself just before me, showing the way to Reding, that I might see her Ornaments, perhaps to gain the more respect.

Her grandmother’s new pig would have affected her as much, Madame Knight noted tartly.

She then paid John and dismissed him. Then she asked “Miss” to show her where she must sleep.

Shee conducted me to a parlor in a little back Lento, wch was almost fill’d with the bedstead, wch was so high that I was forced to climb on a chair to gitt up to ye wretched bed that lay on it; on wch having stretchy my tired Limbs, and lay’d my head on a Sad-colourd pillow, I began to ink on the transactions of ye past day.

Map: Approximate route of Sarah Kemble Knight, 1704-1705, including “Connecticut Colonie”; detail of John Senex, A new Map of the English Empire in America, 1719. This story last updated in 2022.

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