Old But Not the Oldest: The Construction of the “Cradock House”
William Bucknam: 1601-1679
For many years it was believed that Medford, Massachusetts’
Cradock House (now known as the Peter Tufts House) was the oldest house
remaining in its original form in the northeastern United States. According to
the accepted story, Matthew Cradock, one of the founding members of the
Massachusetts Bay Company, was named Governor of the Colony in May 1629. He intended
to live in the Colony and purchased land in what is now the city of Medford,
with the idea that a “plantation” would be established for him and a suitable
house would be built before his arrival. According to the book Medford on the Mystic:
“The men sent over by the Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Company,
Matthew Cradock, London merchant and dedicated Puritan, had not yet staked out a ‘plantation’
for him on the land near the ford. That would happen the next year, 1630, when his successor as governor,
John Winthrop, and the thousand folks in the Winthrop fleet reached Salem. . . .”
 |
| Peter Tufts House, formerly the Cradock House, 2017 |
According to the history of the Bucknam branch of my family tree,
Cradock contracted with a 28-year-old joiner named William Bucknam, to build
his house. Bucknam, my ninth-great-grandfather, traveled from London aboard one
of the Winthrop ships in 1630. The house supposedly was completed two years
later in 1634. Although a “joiner” is more of a specialty carpenter and wood
craftsman rather than architect and builder, Bucknam was credited with the
building, and presumably the designing of the house.
This version of the house’s origin persisted well into the twentieth
century. Above is an 1880s advertisement that features a description of the
house and the construction date of 1634. Below is the front and back of a
stereoscope card now held in the Getty Museum Collection that states the house
is the “oldest building in the United States retaining its original form.” The
card was printed late in the 19th century.
However, recent research has called this story into question. The house is now known by the name of its first resident and likely actual builder, Peter Tufts, and the actual construction date is most likely to have been around 1677. According to the Wikipedia entry on the Tufts home, “The house has been called the "fort" and the "garrison house" because of its thick walls and portholes.” The house still stands at 350 Riverside Avenue (formerly Ship Street) in Medford. It was a handsome home, and still is quite imposing.
The Wikipedia page still references my ancestor, stating, “The house
was probably built by Peter Tufts, who sold it to his son, Peter (Captain)
Tufts Jr. in 1680. The brick mason was William Bucknam, brought over in 1632
from Chelsea, England to build the house.”
I question whether my ancestor could have served as brick mason for the
Tufts house. By 1677, William Bucknam was in his late 70s and died just two
years later. It seems unlikely that he could have been involved in any sort of
construction role other than a mere supervisory one. I suspect that Bucknam instead
built a house on the property in 1634 as originally believed, but that the
original house did not survive. When Tufts acquired the property in the 1670s,
he simply built a new home there, and the two buildings were conflated in local
lore.
There is evidence that William Bucknam was a skilled homebuilder. The
Old Bucknam House, the house he built for his own family, survived some 220
years. In 1649, William purchased land along the Mystic River in what is now
Malden, Massachusetts. He built a home there that was passed down to his
descendants until the 1870s or 1880s. An 1893 publication, the Everett Souvenir, published photos of
the house before it was torn down by Bucknam’s great-grandson, Joseph Swan.
A pamphlet published by the Everett Historical Society described the house as follows:
A pamphlet published by the Everett Historical Society described the house as follows:
“The timbers, hewn with an axe, were oak. The cellar was cobblestone.
The house was lined between the studdings with large hand-made bricks of clay.
Immense oak timbers spanned the entire breadth of the house. Every nail was of
iron wrought by hammer and nail. William's grandson, Lieutenant Samuel Bucknam,
built an addition to the original house, enclosing the original house in the
northwest corner of the new structure. This structure was a two-story
mansion-type house with an ell on the east. There was an ornamental chimney on
top.”
I am amazed that even half-demolished, the structure stood without
sagging as can be seen below. Obviously it was well-constructed, so we can
infer that William was a more-than-competent builder.
William also reconstructed his father-in-law’s house, the Knower House,
in 1660. No description or image of that house remain.
I wanted to add a charming story about the Bucknam house. A pear tree grew
near the house. Supposedly it was brought from England as a sapling in 1630 and
was planted on the homestead by Bucknam. (If so, where was the tree during the
years between 1630 and 1649 when Bucknam purchased the property?) According to
several sources, the tree produced fruit for over two hundred years until at
least 1855. It was struck by lightning around 1871 and split from top to
bottom, yet in 1872 new shoots appeared, and blossoms appeared in 1874. The
gnarled trunk of the tree can be seen in the photo of the house from the 1880s.
In conclusion, for over two centuries, people believed that William
Bucknam had built the oldest surviving house in America. However, it now
appears that the Peter Tufts House not only does not qualify for the title of
oldest house, having been constructed in the 1670s instead of 1634, but also
that William Bucknam likely never worked on the Tufts house. Instead, he
probably built an earlier house that did not survive. However, William did
build his own home in the Malden area, which stood until it was demolished in
the late 1880s. While the Bucknam House was certainly old, it sadly cannot be
called the oldest house in the northeast.
Sources:
Medford on the Mystic,
by Carl and Alan Seaburg, 1980
“The Bucknam-Swan House” by Julia Rich Hogan, Everett
Historical Society Pamphlet, 1981
No comments:
Post a Comment