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Jason Russell House

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Coordinates: 42°24′58″N 71°09′31″W / 42.41611°N 71.15861°W / 42.41611; -71.15861
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Jason Russell House
The Jason Russell House
Location7 Jason St.
Arlington, Massachusetts
Coordinates42°24′58″N 71°09′31″W / 42.41611°N 71.15861°W / 42.41611; -71.15861
Part ofArlington Center Historic District (ID85002691)
NRHP reference No.74000363
Significant dates
Added to NRHPOctober 9, 1974
Designated CPSeptember 27, 1985

The Jason Russell House is a historic house in Arlington, Massachusetts, the site of the bloodiest[citation needed] fighting on the first day of the American Revolutionary War, April 19, 1775 (the Battle of Lexington and Concord). The house was purchased in 1923 by the Arlington Historical Society which restored it in 1926, and now operates it as a museum from mid-April through the end of October, together with the adjoining Smith Museum, built in 1981 to house changing exhibitions of life in Arlington.

Construction

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About 1740, Jason Russell (1716–1775), a relatively[quantify] prosperous farmer and militiaman, constructed the house on pasture land he inherited in 1738. To have the front facing south, in the New England tradition, he placed the north side angled toward the Concord Road (now Massachusetts Avenue). The house is a typical New England farmhouse with five windows across the front, a door in the center and a large chimney in the middle of a pitched roof. There is some evidence that components in the hall (or kitchen) and its chamber above, as well as the garret, were salvaged from Grandfather Jason's original structure of 1680. The hall and parlor of the house, with their chambers and the garret, are essentially unchanged today, although in 1814 a porch (or vestibule) was added to the front door, and further extensions were subsequently added to the sides around 1863. Inside the central part are four rooms: to the left of the entry are the kitchen and children's chamber (above), and to the right, the parlor and parlor chamber. The kitchen ceiling retains its original whitewash and sponge painting decorative surface treatment. The outside walls may have been plastered originally, but in 1924, when the house was restored, wood sheathing was installed.[1]

Robert Nylander proposed in 1964 that the house was built in two stages; however, research conducted in 2012 by the Dendrochronology Laboratory at Oxford University confirms that the home was erected during a single campaign in 1745, as had been maintained by Russell family lore.[2] The Oxford study also revealed that many of the timbers used in the house were made from lumber cut in 1684–85 or earlier and was probably salvaged from an older building on the property.[3]

April 19, 1775

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Patriots' Grave in the Old Burying Ground, Arlington, Massachusetts.

On April 19, 1775, the house and its surrounding yard was the site of the bloodiest conflict of the first battle in the Revolutionary War, resulting in more colonial troop deaths than anywhere else along the battle road. As British troops marched back towards Boston, heavy fighting occurred along their route through Arlington (then Menotomy). Brigadier-General Hugh Percy gave orders to clear every dwelling to eliminate snipers, and houses along the way were ransacked and set afire by the retreating British. The running battle continued to Jason Russell's house, where Russell was joined by men from Beverly, Danvers, Lynn, Salem, Dedham, and Needham at his house.

The battle at the Jason Russell House occurred late in the day, around five PM. Light infantry and grenadiers from the detachment which engaged earlier at Lexington and Concord marched toward Boston along the Concord Road. They had been met earlier in Lexington by a brigade led by Lord Percy that brought up the rear and provided strong flanking parties. The Americans kept up incessant fire from behind stone walls and other places of shelter as the British retreated.[4]

These skirmishes erupted into a full-fledged battle at the Jason Russell House. A company of minute-men under the command of Gen. Gideon Foster, along with several other companies of minute-men and militia, had left Danvers earlier. All reached Menotomy before the British. Many of them went into a walled enclosure near the Jason Russell House where they planned to intercept the retreating soldiers.[5] Despite being warned to watch for a flank-guard, by Israel Hutchinson, one of their company captains, they focused on the main body of British as it passed. When the party flanking the Concord Road to the south surprised them, the Americans were caught between and several of them fell.[6]

Jason Russell was 59 and lame. At noon, he had started with his wife and children to seek safety at the George Prentiss house higher up on the hill, but after proceeding part way he sent them on alone and returned to his house to defend it. A nearby neighbor, Ammi Cutter, advised him to seek safety, but Russell refused, reportedly saying "An Englishman's house is his castle." Cutter himself was nearly killed by fire from an advance flanking party. Stumbling and falling between mill logs as bullets hit their bark around him, he was thought dead and the British passed him by.[7]

Bullet holes in the main staircase of the house are still visible.

Russell was outside his house and joined his fellow minute-men as they fled toward it. Being old and slow, he was in the rear and was shot twice as he reached his own doorway and then stabbed eleven times with bayonets. The British then rushed into the house and engaged its occupants, prompting the minutemen to find shelter. Eight minute-men made it to the basement and fired up the stairs.[8]

Smith, in his address of 1864, citing as his sources Col. Thomas Russell and Mrs. Lydia Russell Teel (both being grandchildren of the fallen Jason Russell) reported that “Our people gathered up the Americans who were killed in and about the house, and laid them side by side in the south room, and when Mrs. Russell came back to her home she found them there, weltering in their own blood, her husband and eleven others. She said that the blood in the room was almost ankle deep. The house itself was riddled with bullets, and the marks of them in many places are still visible. The same blood-stained floor remained on that room till a year ago.”[9]

The twelve were soon brought by oxen-drawn sled to the Precinct burying ground and buried in a mass grave, clothes and all, although the bodies were neatly laid out.[10] However, a Capt. William Adams, who lived nearby, is reported to have brought a sheet from his house for Jason himself, as he could not bear to see his neighbor buried without a winding-sheet.[11]

A plain obelisk of New Hampshire granite was later raised above the grave. The inscription on the monument reads:

Erected by the Inhabitants of West Cambridge, A.D. 1848, over the common grave of Jason Russell, Jason Winship, Jabez Wyman and nine others, who were slain in this town by the British Troops on their retreat from the Battles of Lexington and Concord, April 19th, 1775. Being among the first to lay down their lives in the struggle for American Independence.[12]

The nine others, forgotten at the time the monument was erected, have since been identified as: John Bacon, Amos Mills, Jonathan Parker, Nathan Chamberlain of Needham, William Flint, Thomas Hadley, Abednego Ramsdell of Lynn, Elias Haven of Dedham and Benjamin Pierce of Salem.[13]

Two of the twelve, Jabez Wyman and Jacob Winship -- who were buried together with the other ten -- were killed not at the Jason Russell House, but further down the road at Cooper's tavern, and must have been placed with the others after the fighting had ceased. Both were unarmed noncombatants.[14] Though initially identified by the innkeepers simply as "two elderly gentlemen,"[15] they were definitely identified by July of that same year.[16]

Jason Russell's estate was settled in 1776. His house and 117 acres of land were divided between Noah, his only son left at home, and his widow, Elizabeth. She received the 17 acres the house was standing on together with half the house, "Libberty to ues the oven when wanted" and additional privileges of use, including space in the barn. Noah received the other half of the house, half the barn and some lands. Other children got other parts of the estate. Elizabeth Russell lived in her northerly rooms until the eleventh of August 1786 when she died aged 65.[17]

See also

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Notes

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  1. ^ Nylander 1964, p. 33
  2. ^ "What do we know about the construction of the Jason Russell House?". Arlington Historical Society. October 14, 2014. Retrieved October 21, 2024.
  3. ^ Oxford Dendrochronology Laboratory Report 20012/45
  4. ^ Cutter 1880, p. 64.
  5. ^ Cutter 1880, p. 67.
  6. ^ Smith 1864, p. 38.
  7. ^ Smith 1864, p. 38.
  8. ^ Smith 1864, p. 38.
  9. ^ Smith 1864, p. 39.
  10. ^ Smith 1864, pp. 51-52; Cutter 1880, p. 79.
  11. ^ Cutter 1880, p. 70.
  12. ^ Cutter 1880, p. 70.
  13. ^ Nylander 1964, p. 38
  14. ^ Smith, pp. 44-45
  15. ^ Smith, pp. 55-56
  16. ^ Cutter, pp. 74-75
  17. ^ Nylander 1964, p. 39

References

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