notes on the Peaslee Garrison House

This note came from a reader:

I enjoy your blog, Sunday Drives - Merrimack Valley. I am interested however to learn how you dated the Peaslee Garrison c1710. The Indian uprisings were over in Haverhill by that time and my research dates the house to 1673. George W. Chase's history of Haverhill would seem to support that date.

Thank you for shedding light on this.


I replied:

Hello,

Thanks for reading the blog. Remember when you read that I am an architect, writing about seeing buildings at least as much as about history.

I wrote that column 20 years ago, and today, I'm not sure why I dated it c.1710. I would have used the information in the Haverhill Public Library collection. The photograph came from there. I chose that house because I wanted, as an architect, to talk about the rare early brick houses in the Valley. At a time the paper expected me to focus on Andover and N. Andover. I was gently spreading out to other towns.

I suspect I was being cautious - the house is First Period, other people had confirmed that. Construction details change about 1715. Also I know that people want their houses to be older than they are, and that a deed to the land does not necessarily mean the house you see was built on that date. The word 'garrison' for the house came with it. I cannot remember now, a discussion about Indians... the name is what was attached to the house, so I used it.

You will find 2 brief introductions to the naming of house styles if you read about the Smiley House in Haverhill and the 4-Square on Lexington Ave. in Bradford.

I have never been in the house. That was in the early days of the column and I was an unknown. Later on people welcomed me, and I was able to learn much more. In the beginning I had to write just from what I could see from the street and the photograph.

If historians skilled in determining 1670 construction from that of 1710 have looked at the house, and dated it to 1673, then what I said would be wrong. Someone might like to add a comment to my blog correcting my date and explaining why.

When I decided to transcribe the columns (207 of them) to the internet, I made a conscious decision not to update them - I would have to revisit each one and the work would never be done, especially because I no longer live in the area.


a footnote to these e-mails: I have seen a foundation in a First Period house in Haverhill that is reported to have been a garrison. It was built rather like a medieval castle, with angled window slits. If the Peaslee House has similar windows, that could verify the name, 'garrison' and push back the date. Reference to the house being used in 1670 in other writings would also help. As an architect, I find I am more comfortable using construction details.

#17 - Hazen Garrison House, 8 Groveland St., Haverhill, 1724 (08/93)

If only rebuilder had kept records...photo courtesy of Haverhill Public Library





(current photo not original to the article, but it does a better job than the original at showing inset chimneys and smaller end-windows - taken by David Shultz, ed.)

Wallace Nutting, who took this photograph of the Hazen Garrison House in approximately 1920, rebuilt colonial houses at the turn of the 20th century. He had an eye for special houses – this is one of only three brick First Period (i.e., before 1725) houses built in Haverhill. Brick arches span the windows and reinforce the chimneys, and only 4 rooms large, the house feels bigger because the chimneys are built within the ends, as part of the brick walls. So, unlike a center chimney colonial with two windows on either side of the front door, here there are three – the third being a little window for the cubby hole by the fireplace. The chimney and fireplaces are set into the rooms because once they are warmed by fires; they radiate heat into the rooms. 

 

Wallace Nutting had no doubts about how this house must have looked originally. Discarding the existing windows - square paned traditional sash that slid up and down – he added the diamond paned hinged casements seen in this photograph, sure that the house had originally looked like an English medieval manor. He wanted the house to have been built before 1700. Today, we date it to about 1724. Nutting labeled it a ‘garrison’, referring to the last American Indian raid on Haverhill, which was in 1721. So this house may have been used as a refuge. The extended row of brick at the second and third floor is not an overhang of one floor over another, but a way of covering the ends of the wood joists, which tie into the brick wall there.

Historians today wish that Wallace Nutting had kept records of what he found as he rebuilt this house, so that we could agree or disagree with his vision of the original house.

(Here is a photo of the house in 1870 - I've added this as an example of how much he must have changed it. Both photos borrowed from this website. Here also is an interesting link to real estate website, which describes the house's history (both no longer active), and another to a Lawrence Eagle-Tribune newspaper story from 2007, about one of his descendants– ed)

More information, added 1/18/2014: I know of anther house in Haverhill with a lower level built as garrison with angled reveals on openings, similar to what one would  find in a castle wall. Perhaps the basement here was once partially above grade and had similar openings. The Peaslee House - which I have written about - is also reported to have been a garrison.
The Haverhill Public Library has extensive records and resources on Haverhill history.