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| | | | Jackson House | | | | |
This house is at least the second house to occupy the site. This property stayed in the Jackson family from 1695 to 1800, with only the sale of small strips of land to neighbors north and south before the Revolution. In 1766 the estate of Joshua Jackson was divided among several heirs, with Nathaniel Jackson receiving the west half of a house along Horse Lane and Samuel Jackson the east. Except for mortgages and the taking of a strip of land to the north to extend Jefferson Street toward the river in 1797, these two owned the undivided property in common until 1800 when Nathaniel sold his portion to Samuel for $330. Samuel, a joiner, immediately sold off the whole site for $1600 to William Dennett, a spar maker from Kittery from whom it passed to several new owners between 1805 and 1815.
The sequence of ownership combined with physical evidence suggest this house was built circa 1790-1800, just prior to its sale out of the Jackson family in 1800. It is sited with its gable end to Horse Lane, providing a southern exposure to the windows along its front facade and allowing the use of a lot that was three feet narrower than the 30' length of the house.
The plan is typical of many of the small houses raised in a localized building boom in the late 1790s. Abbott, Shapiro and Rider-Wood houses are three more examples along Jefferson Street. A center chimney with small lobby entrance and winding stair is flanked by two rooms down and two rooms upstairs. Scars on the back wall show the location of an ell.
An unexpected feature is best seen from the exterior on the north side. Exposed when the museum began sill repairs, an unused rear fire-box in the original chimney stack and structural framing for a doorway were found under the original sheathing. These indicate unrealized intentions of building an ell. When lots were sold immediately to the north of this house in 1814 and another house squeezed between it and Jefferson Street, there was no room for the projected ell, and the provisions for it were subsequently forgotten. It raises the possibility that other New England houses may have been built in phases around such pre-planned details.
This small house is preserved without restoration to teach about the nature of the evidence of change in architecture and decoration, and the process of research. The rooms have been probed to determine the sequence of alteration and redecoration, then frozen for visitors to decode for themselves. Exhibit panels throughout the house provide documentary genealogical, and oral history data about the owners, residents and their neighborhood throughout the occupancy of this house into the mid twentieth century.
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