http://www.historicalcommission.town.bolton.ma.us/main/inventoryforms.html INVENTORY FORM CONTINUATION SHEET Community Property Bolton 412 Main Street Hildreth/Whitney House Masschusetts Historical Commission Massachusetts Archives Building 220 Morrissey Boulevard Boston, Massachusetts 02125 Area(s) Form No. 33 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- ADDITIONAL INFORMATION BY ANNE FORBES, CONSULTANT TO BOLTON HISTORICAL COMMISSION, APRIL 1998: ASSESSOR'S PARCEL: 4D-25 ACREAGE: 2.14 acres FILM ROLL/NEGATIVE: XI-4 ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION, cont. #412 Main Street is one of several historic houses in Bolton that were built as one story cottages, and raised to 2 1/2-stories in the latter part of the nineteenth century. This is the only one known to have been raised from a "three-quarter" Cape Cod cottage. It is still four- by two bays, with the second-story windows aligned above those on the first. Because of the enlargement as well as later changes in detail, however, the house bears little visual reference to the late-Federal/early Greek Revival era in which it was built. The off-center ridge chimney is tall and narrow, and the side-gabled roof is steeply pitched, with a molded, boxed cornice which overhangs the gable ends. The top of the facade wall is trimmed with a wide frieze with a finely-scaled bed molding; other trim includes narrow cornerboards and a new sillboard on the facade. The windows have modern replacement 1-over-1-sash in flat surrounds, and the main entry has a ca. 1900 door with a large glass light and panels below. Its surround, however, retains elements of what appears to be the original Federal/Greek Revival entry, with boarded-over 2/3-length sidelights above paneled aprons, and narrow pilasters with a molding around the edge. Above the doorway is a wide frieze with architrave. Its crown is missing, its place taken by the shed roof of a twentieth-century porch, presently supported on square posts. There is no floor on the porch. The house is in fair condition, clad in wood clapboards, with an asphalt-shingle roof, and appears to have a largely rebuilt concrete foundation. A one-story ell that extends to the rear from the southwest corner is shingled on the east side, and has old clapboards on the west wall. This building is situated close to the edge of Main Street directly opposite Burnham Road, at the curving corner of Long Hill Road. A low modern fieldstone retaining wall lines the front of the narrow property, which extends back to the shore of West's Pond. Two outbuildings stand close to the house: a modern two-car garage situated next to the road, and, behind the house, a large, altered shed-roofed shed, (possibly remaining from the former barn), open on the north end, its other walls clad in horizontal and vertical siding. HISTORICAL NARRATIVE, cont. Formerly called the Woodbury House, current research has led to a change in historic name to the Hildreth/Whitney House. (Former address: 412 Great Road). According to some notes of historian Esther Whitcomb, this house was built about 1828 by Tabby Hildreth. This may have been Timothy Hildreth (b. ca. 1758), or more likely "Nabby" Hildreth, possibly of a later generation. Later deed research, however, shows that in 1824 Nabby Hildreth of Sterling bought what was apparently this property, with buildings on it, from Thomas Arnold. According to the same notes, Thomas Arnold, a shoemaker or "cordwainer", had bought the same property of 1/2 acre and buildings from William Watson in 1821. Nabby Hildreth may have been a relative of Joseph Hildreth, who from 1817 to 1835 owned and operated the former Holman Inn (built ca. 1730, burned 1890) on the property at today's 225 Main Street. The deeds show that in 1828, rather than building the house, Nabby Hildreth actually sold the property, to William W. Whitney. He married Susannah Smith of Harvard in 1829, and the purchase may have been associated with their marriage. Mr. Whitney was one of several men on this stretch of Main Street called "the Pan" who engaged in comb-making in the late 1820's and 1830's. Others were Elcanah Caswell of 443 Main Street (see Form #67), who used the nearby Sawyer gristmill to operate his machinery, and Orson Bailey of 421 Main (see Form #65), as well as a subsequent owner of this house, Orson's brother, Dexter Bailey. On the map of 1857 the owner of the house was Benjamin Bailey, while the map of 1870 shows it to be Dexter Bailey. Little is known about the Baileys, who may all have been brothers. Dexter Bailey married Betsy B. Woodbury in 1832. He was paid for moving the schoolhouse on the Pan to its final location just east of #442 Main Street in 1855, and, with Orson Bailey, (see Form #65--421 Main Street), was another one of the people on the Pan who took up comb making in the late 1820's and 1830's. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the house was owned by Frederick A. Woodbury, Dexter and Betsy Bailey's grandson. Like at least two of his nearby neighbors, he was a carriage-painter, (he painted the town hearse in 1902), and farmed twenty-one acres here in the early 1900's. For many years he was a member of the Rescue Hook & Ladder Co., a volunteer fire-fighting association formed in 1885. He was Steward of the association in 1888, and elected its Treasurer in 1889. In 1947 his widow, Hope Woodbury, sold the property to their son Robert Woodbury, who lived their with his wife, Mary, into the late 1960's. BIBLIOGRAPHY and/or REFERENCES Maps and atlases: 1831 (W.W. Whitney); 1857 (B. Bayley); 1870 (D. Bailey); 1898 (F.A. Woodbury) Whitcomb, E. About Bolton, 1988. Bolton Historical Society: notes on deed research for 412 Main St. Bolton street directories (in The Hudson Directory). Bolton Vital Records; cemetery records. [ ] Recommended for listing in the National Register of Historic Places. If checked, you must attach completed National Register Criteria Statement form is attached.