This Old House (in Maynard, MA)

Winter view, 10 Maple Street, Maynard, MA

Maynard, Brooks, Greer, Hanna, Partridge, Barlow, Marsden, Jones and D’Amico/Mark. Those are the families who owned the property at 10 Maple Street from 1870 through the present. A reproduction of an 1875 street map at the Maynard Historical Society shows a house belonging to Charles Brooks, so the house itself is at least 145 years old. As built, the house likely did not have indoor plumbing, as the town did not have a water system until the late 1880s. The closest public well was at the corner of Concord and Brooks Streets. The house may have had piped gas for gaslight fixtures. Electric lights did not begin to reach Maynard until 1902, when the Mill contracted to provide power for street lights.

Learning the names of the litany of owners (and the price at each sale) required going to Middlesex County Courthouse, Cambridge, to leaf through records of property sales. The oldest showed A&L Maynard Company selling the property to Charles Brooks in 1870 for $2,430. Mr. Brooks was 56 years old at the time of purchase. The 1870 U.S. Census described him as a widower working at a saw mill, with four teenage daughters. The saw mill was most likely the one owned by the woolen mill, near the Walnut Street bridge.

The deed does not specify whether there was a house on the property at the time of the sale to Brooks, but Amory Maynard and his son Lorenzo owned other lots on Maple Street at the time. It is possible they were building and selling houses in addition to owning and operating the mills. In support of this theory, most of the houses on Maple Street and Maple Court have a similar architecture, indicating they were all built at the same time.

The Owners:

   Before 1870          A&L Maynard Co.

   1870-1879             Charles G. Brooks

   1879-1896             Alexander & Elizabeth Greer

   1896-1924             Mary Hanna

   1924-1926             Charles T. Partridge

   1926-1953             William and Carrie Barlow

   1953-1987             Thomas and Blanche Marsden

   1988-2000             Craig & Tresa Jones

   2000-Present         David Mark and Jean D’Amico

At first glance that’s nine unrelated owners over 150 years, but a bicycle trip through Glendale Cemetery complemented what was learned from the deeds. Alexander and Elizabeth Greer bought the house from Brooks in 1879. The 1880 U.S. Census listed Alexander as a watchman at the woolen mill. Alexander and Elizabeth were both born in Scotland in 1827.

Summer view, 10 Maple Street, Maynard, MA

The Greers had three children: Mary, Walter and James. Walter died in 1885, aged 24 years. James died in 1879, aged 16 years. Mary married John Hanna in 1880. She took over ownership of the house. Thus, two generations of Greer/Hanna owned the house for 45 years. John was a carpenter at the woolen mill. Mary lived to 91, and in doing so, survived her parents, brothers, husband and children.  

Before she died, Mary Hanna sold the house to Charles and Esther Partridge. Upon Charles’ death it went to their daughter Carrie Barlow, and in turn to her daughter, Blanche Marsden, who had no children. This time, three generations of the family owned the house for 63 years. The Partridge/Barlow/Marsden plot is also in the Glendale Cemetery. The Marsden inheritors sold it to Craig and Tresa Jones in 1988. Jean D’Amico and David Mark bought the house from the Jones in 2000.

The house is white, with black shutters. The foundation is field stone cemented in place, topped with a few feet of brick. The scarcity of stone walls in Maynard suggests that most of the farm walls were recycled into foundations and chimneys. While the stone is likely local, it is very possible that the wood for the wide plank pine floors, framing and walls was brought in by railroad, as almost all of eastern Massachusetts was denuded of trees by the early 1800s.

Painted loon (over front door) came with house in 2000.

Houses change. The Greers were there for hook-up to town water. The Marsdens were most likely responsible for converting a front porch to a room on a concrete slab, for extending the kitchen, adding a downstairs bathroom, and for adding the current back porch with its wooden slat awnings. D’Amico/Mark removed the cramped second floor bathroom and attic space over the kitchen, and converted that into a full-size bathroom plus a laundry room and walk-in closet.

The property also includes a 25x40 foot, two-story barn, with what was a stall for one horse. Construction date unknown. A good guess would be that Brooks, Greer and/or Hanna kept a horse and wagon to haul freight to and from the railroad. As late as 1920 there were still more than 100 horses residing in Maynard.