Nathaniel Winsor Jr. House

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Nathaniel Winsor Jr. House
Nathaniel Winsor, Jr. house, built in 1807, Duxbury, Massachusetts LCCN2011632169.tif
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Location Duxbury, Massachusetts
Coordinates 42°2′20.73″N70°40′17.14″W / 42.0390917°N 70.6714278°W / 42.0390917; -70.6714278 Coordinates: 42°2′20.73″N70°40′17.14″W / 42.0390917°N 70.6714278°W / 42.0390917; -70.6714278
Built1807
Architectural style Federal
Part of Old Shipbuilders Historic District (#86001899 [1] )
Added to NRHPAugust 21, 1986

The Nathaniel Winsor Jr. House is a historic house located at 479 Washington Street Duxbury, Massachusetts. It currently serves as the headquarters of the Duxbury Rural and Historical Society.

Duxbury, Massachusetts Town in Massachusetts, United States

Duxbury is a historic seaside town in Plymouth County, Massachusetts, United States. A suburb located on the South Shore approximately 35 miles (56 km) to the southeast of Boston, the population was 15,059 at the 2010 census.

Duxbury Rural and Historical Society organization

The Duxbury Rural and Historical Society (DRHS) is a non-profit organization in Duxbury, Massachusetts founded in 1883. Its mission is to "preserve and promote the heritage and rural character of the town of Duxbury and its environs." The DRHS owns several historic buildings, operates a library and archives, and maintains approximately 140 acres of conservation land in Duxbury.

Contents

The house is a contributing property in Duxbury's Old Shipbuilder's Historic District listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1986.

Old Shipbuilders Historic District United States historic place

The Old Shipbuilder's Historic District is a 287-acre (116 ha) historic district in Duxbury, Massachusetts. The district includes both sides of Washington Street extending from South Duxbury to Powder Point Avenue, including several side streets off of Washington and a small portion of St. George Street and Powder Point Avenue.

National Register of Historic Places Federal list of historic sites in the United States

The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance. A property listed in the National Register, or located within a National Register Historic District, may qualify for tax incentives derived from the total value of expenses incurred in preserving the property.

History

The house was built for shipping merchant Nathaniel Winsor Jr. (September 8, 1775 – June 4, 1859) and his wife Hannah Loring Winsor (May 16, 1780 – June 9, 1850). Nathaniel Jr. was the third generation of a prosperous shipbuilding family. His grandfather, Samuel Winsor, began building small fishing vessels on Clark's Island in Plymouth Bay in the 1740s. Nathaniel's father, Nathaniel Winsor, Sr., was among the first entrepreneurs in Duxbury to commence the construction of fishing schooners on a large scale just after the American Revolution. In his youth, Nathaniel Jr. worked as a carver in his father's shipyard, carving figureheads and decorative nautical moulding. By the early 19th century, Nathaniel Jr. had inherited his father's busy fishing fleet and continued to expand the firm's operations to include international trade. Eventually, the Winsor family mercantile operation was transferred to Boston and Nathaniel Jr.'s son, Nathaniel Winsor III, took over affairs around the 1840s, creating the "Winsor Line," one of Boston's first regular lines of clipperships running between Boston and San Francisco. [2]

Clarks Island island in the United States of America

Clark's Island is the name of a small island located in Duxbury Bay in the U.S. state of Massachusetts. It was named for John Clark, the first mate of the Mayflower, the ship that brought the Pilgrims to New England. The island was initially considered for the location of the Pilgrim's settlement, but was rejected in favor of a site to the south, which became known as Plymouth, Massachusetts. Today Clark's Island is a part of the town of Plymouth.

Plymouth Bay Bay at Plymouth, Massachusetts, USA

Plymouth Bay is a small, well-protected bay of the Atlantic Ocean on the western shore of larger Cape Cod Bay along the coastline of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Plymouth Bay retains historical significance for the landing at Plymouth Rock in 1620 by the Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower who proceeded to establish the first permanent Northern European settlement in North America at Plymouth Colony.

American Revolution Revolt in which the Thirteen Colonies won independence from Great Britain

The American Revolution was a colonial revolt which occurred between 1765 and 1783. The American Patriots in the Thirteen Colonies defeated the British in the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783) with the assistance of France, winning independence from Great Britain and establishing the United States of America.

In 1835, the house was purchased by Nathaniel's son-in-law, Capt. Erastus Sampson (1808–1885). Sampson had married Elizabeth Winsor (1808–1885), one of Nathaniel's daughters, in 1830. Sampson was best known as the captain of the Ship Coriolanus of Boston, built in Duxbury in 1829. The Sampson family, spending most of their time in Boston and probably summering in Duxbury, owned the house until 1893.

During the early 20th century, the house was operated by a variety of proprietors as a hotel known as the "Colonial Inn." In 1950, it was purchased by Dr. and Mrs. Edwin Leonard and operated as a bed and breakfast. It had a distinguished clientele including Buckminster Fuller, inventor of the geodesic dome, Sir William Hawthorne, Master of Churchill College, Cambridge, and actress Margaret Hamilton, best known as the Wicked Witch of the West in the film The Wizard of Oz . [3]

Buckminster Fuller American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist

Richard Buckminster Fuller was an American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist. Fuller published more than 30 books, coining or popularizing terms such as "Spaceship Earth", "Dymaxion" house/car, ephemeralization, synergetic, and "tensegrity". He also developed numerous inventions, mainly architectural designs, and popularized the widely known geodesic dome. Carbon molecules known as fullerenes were later named by scientists for their structural and mathematical resemblance to geodesic spheres.

Sir William Rede Hawthorne CBE, FRS, FREng, FIMECHE, FRAES, was a British professor of engineering who worked on the development of the jet engine. Bragg-Hawthorne equation is named after him.

Margaret Hamilton (actress) American film character actress

Margaret Brainard Hamilton was an American film character actress best known for her portrayal of Miss Almira Gulch and the Wicked Witch of the West in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's classic film The Wizard of Oz (1939).

In 1997, after a community fundraising effort, the house was purchased by the Duxbury Rural and Historical Society for use as their headquarters. The building currently houses the offices of the Rural and Historical Society and serves as a site for public and private functions.

Architecture

The house is recognized for its high Federal style architecture and grand scale. Five bays wide and a full three storeys high, its low roofline is nearly masked by its cornice, so that it presents a rectangle to the road. Full height pilasters mark the corners. The doorway features a half elliptical or demilune fanlight and side lights, expressing the generous width of the central hall behind. Above is a central Serlian window lighting the wide upper hall. In Duxbury, where the Federal period houses are typically more conservative, the Nathaniel Winsor Jr. House is unusual, as there are very few of its advanced style on the South Shore of Massachusetts. Its builders were clearly influenced by the residences designed by Charles Bulfinch and Asher Benjamin. According to tradition, some of the interior carving was done by Nathaniel Winsor Jr. himself.

Federal architecture architectural style

Federal-style architecture is the name for the classicizing architecture built in the newly founded United States between c. 1780 and 1830, and particularly from 1785 to 1815. This style shares its name with its era, the Federalist Era. The name Federal style is also used in association with furniture design in the United States of the same time period. The style broadly corresponds to the classicism of Biedermeier style in the German-speaking lands, Regency architecture in Britain and to the French Empire style.

Pilaster decorative architectural element giving the appearance of a supporting column

A pilaster is an architectural element in classical architecture used to give the appearance of a supporting column and to articulate an extent of wall, with only an ornamental function. It consists of a flat surface raised from the main wall surface, usually treated as though it were a column, with a capital at the top, plinth (base) at the bottom, and the various other column elements. In contrast to a pilaster, an engaged column or buttress can support the structure of a wall and roof above.

Ellipse Plane curve: conic section

In mathematics, an ellipse is a plane curve surrounding two focal points, such that for all points on the curve, the sum of the two distances to the focal points is a constant. As such, it generalizes a circle, which is the special type of ellipse in which the two focal points are the same. The elongation of an ellipse is measured by its eccentricity e, a number ranging from e = 0 to e = 1.

The Winsor Family

Clipper ship card RADUGA (Ship) (c112-02-18).jpg
Clipper ship card

Nathaniel and Hannah raised ten children in the house. The eight sons all became involved in maritime occupations. "The Winsor Line" managed by Nathaniel Winsor III continued in operation until 1907. Another son, Capt. Charles Winsor, led a successful career as a clippership captain and eventually became the keeper of East Brother Lighthouse in San Francisco Bay. One of Nathaniel Jr.'s grandchildren, Justin Winsor, became one of the nation's leading historians, head of the Boston Public Library, and a pioneer in the field of library science.

Justin Winsor American librarian and historian

Justin Winsor was a prominent American writer, librarian, and historian. His historical work had strong bibliographical and cartographical elements. He was an authority on the early history of North America. His self-confidence, energy and congeniality augmented his entrepreneurial skills and were well received by his peers, who elected him as the first president of the American Library Association.

Library science is an interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary field that applies the practices, perspectives, and tools of management, information technology, education, and other areas to libraries; the collection, organization, preservation, and dissemination of information resources; and the political economy of information. Martin Schrettinger, a Bavarian librarian, coined the discipline within his work (1808–1828) Versuch eines vollständigen Lehrbuchs der Bibliothek-Wissenschaft oder Anleitung zur vollkommenen Geschäftsführung eines Bibliothekars. Rather than classifying information based on nature-oriented elements, as was previously done in his Bavarian library, Schrettinger organized books in alphabetical order. The first American school for library science was founded by Melvil Dewey at Columbia University in 1887.

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References

  1. ↑ "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places . National Park Service. 2008-04-15.
  2. ↑ Katherine Pillsbury, Duxbury...A Guide, (Duxbury: Duxbury Rural and Historical Society) pp. 69-70.
  3. ↑ Margery MacMillan, Stopping Places Along Duxbury Roads (Duxbury: Duxbury Rural and Historical Society, 1991) pp 27-28.
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