The Spaulding Homestead

The History of the Spaulding Home

The original section of this lovely Georgian style saltbox was built, we estimate, between 1735 and 1765. Designed as a “two over two”, meaning two rooms downstairs and two rooms upstairs with a central chimney and front hall stairs, the house was later modified into a saltbox, probably toward the end of the 1700’s. Local wood was used to build the home – chestnut, poplar and pine. Hand hewn granite slabs and fieldstone formed the exterior foundation on which the sills and post and beam structure sat. The central chimney, with its five fireplaces, rose from a stone and brick arch measuring over five feet in height, and approximately 12 feet long. It was possible to walk inside the arch from one end to the other – probably a great place for hide and seek! The original two over two home had a fireplace in each room; the one in the keeping room, or kitchen, had its own bread oven. Later, a fifth, and larger, fireplace was added when the saltbox addition was built. We probably will never know who built the house but we believe it was one of the early manor homes in Townsend, Massachusetts. It stood on land that was part of the original subdivision of the town when Massachusetts was still a colony being governed by England under King George III. The town was chartered in 1732, being named after King George’s Secretary of State, Viscount Charles Townshend. We traced deeds to this property back to the late 1700’s when, we believe, the home was owned by a Benjamin Spaulding, (1767-1842).

The Spauldings were a large clan, owning numerous farmsteads and businesses in town. Land was bought, inherited, and swapped among the Spauldings and other Townsend ‘first families’ at a vigorous rate. Today, it is sometimes difficult to know what land was being transferred as deed descriptions refer to heaps of stone, trees, iron rods, and neighboring farmsteads to mark boundaries. By the late 1800’s more standardized surveying techniques were used but, still, mention is made in these deeds to iron rods driven into stones by the early settlers. In fact, these rods still exist in sections of the stone wall bounding the house’s property today.

Benjamin Spaulding amassed quite a lot of land during his lifetime, purchased from his father and various persons in the area of today’s Wallace Hill Road. Benjamin had four sons: Benjamin, Jonas, Samuel and Amos. We know Jonas, Samuel, and Amos owned land on Wallace Hill. The 1856 survey map of the town refers to the house as the Amos Spaulding home. When Jonas and Amos died in 1856, and 1857, respectively, it appears that none of their children decided to live in Townsend. So, sometime during the late 1850’s the house ends up in the hands of a nephew, Benjamin Minot Spaulding and his mother, Eliza. His mother sells the property to a Charles Parker in 1861 prior to her death. From that point forward, the house changes hands several times until a George Brown purchases the property in 1874. It remains in the Brown family until 1937.

Today, local residents remember the house as having been owned by the Browns; as often happens, the earlier history of the house had been forgotten – even though it was owned by one of the more prosperous and significant families of the town.

In recent years the house suffered from serious neglect. Its current owner decided against restoration and sold it in 2003.