William Brattle House

William Brattle House

The William Brattle House in 2011 as the Cambridge Center for Adult Education
Location Cambridge, Massachusetts
Coordinates 42°22′25.3″N 71°7′17.6″W / 42.373694°N 71.121556°W / 42.373694; -71.121556Coordinates: 42°22′25.3″N 71°7′17.6″W / 42.373694°N 71.121556°W / 42.373694; -71.121556
Built 1727
Architect Unknown
Architectural style Georgian
Part of Harvard Square Historic District (#86003654)
NRHP Reference #

73000286

[1]
Significant dates
Added to NRHP May 8, 1973
Designated CP July 28, 1988

The William Brattle House is an historic house at 42 Brattle Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It is one of the seven Colonial mansions described by historian Samuel Atkins Eliot as making up Tory Row.[2]

History

William Brattle (1706–1776) by John Singleton Copley, Boston

The house was built in 1727 for Major General William Brattle, at that time the wealthiest man in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the son of William Brattle and nephew of Thomas Brattle. After the 1774 incident known as the Powder Alarm, an angry mob surrounded the Brattle mansion and forced the family to flee to Boston. At age 70, Brattle left Boston for Halifax, Nova Scotia on Evacuation Day, March 17, 1776, and died a few months later on October 26, 1776. He was buried in an unmarked grave in the Old Burying Ground (Halifax, Nova Scotia).[3][4]

According to Edward Abbott, writing in 1859,[5]

General Brattle conveyed all his real estate in Cambridge, December 13, 1774, to his only surviving son, Major Thomas Brattle...By the persevering efforts of Mrs. Katherine Wendell, the only surviving daughter of General Brattle, the estate was preserved from confiscation, and was recovered by Major Brattle after his return from Europe,—having been proscribed in 1778, and having subsequently exhibited satisfactory evidence of his friendship to his country and its political independence.

For a time, the William Brattle House was home to American journalist Margaret Fuller. Fuller's uncle Abraham owned the home at the time, and the Fuller family moved in shortly after Timothy Fuller's unsuccessful campaign for lieutenant governor of Massachusetts as an Anti-Mason.[6] They arrived in September 1831 and left by April 1833.[7]

The house was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1973,[1] and included in an expansion of the Harvard Square Historic District in 1988.[8] It is currently owned and maintained by the Cambridge Center for Adult Education, a non-profit organization that was incorporated in 1938. CCAE also owns the historic Dexter Pratt House.

See also

Media related to William Brattle House at Wikimedia Commons

References

  1. 1 2 National Park Service (2008-04-15). "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service.
  2. ↑ Samuel Atkins Eliot (1913). A history of Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1630-1913. Cambridge Tribune.
  3. ↑ Find A Grave - William Brattle
  4. ↑ "William Brattle House". Cambridge Historical Society. Retrieved 2011-01-20. He was the son of Thomas Brattle who founded Brattle Street Church in Boston, a prominent Congregational then Unitarian house of worship whose members included the Hancocks and the Adamses among other leading Boston families. Although in the 1770s, William Brattle was called a “fence-straddler” for simultaneously appeasing patriots while supporting the British. The Powder Alarm of 1774 revealed where his true allegiance lay.
  5. ↑ Edward Abbott (1879). Samuel Adams Drake, ed. History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts: containing carefully prepared histories of every city and town in the county. Estes and Lauriat. pp. 305–358. ISBN 1-142-17517-0.
  6. ↑ Von Mehren, Joan. The Minerva and the Muse: A Life of Margaret Fuller. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996: 48. ISBN 978-1-55849-015-4
  7. ↑ Capper, Charles. Margaret Fuller: An American Romantic Life: The Private Years. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992: 119–120. ISBN 0-19-509267-8
  8. ↑ "MACRIS inventory record for William Brattle House". Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Retrieved 2014-03-07.


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