| Notes |
- from.."www.therestoredhomestead.com"
The early years of the Pierce homestead
This lovely Georgian colonial has been a landmark in Pepperell for many generations. Holly remembers the home from her childhood when she and friends would ski or tobaggan down the hill behind it and the home was being used as a ski shop. The huge barn next to it was called the Indian Head Ski Lodge but also did double duty as a site for youth center dances and a meeting house for the local chapter of the American Legion..
We often drove past the vacant house on the corner of Dow and Nashua Roads admiring its saltbox profile and wondering how to save it. Time marched on while we reconstructed the Benjamin Spaulding house and the Maxcy Fisher homestead - but we never lost our fascination for this lovely saltbox. And then, it seemed that the gods decided to smile on us for, one day on a whim, we stopped in to see the owner to inquire about the house. The first words out of his mouth were - you want it? How could we say no? Of course, we did!.
Ebenezer Pierce Homestead
He got the keys to the front door and in we went, shoving aside the boxes, old mattresses, and piles of junk littering the rooms. But despite the mess - and we kid you not - we could see the original bones of the old house - the summer beams, wide pine board flooring, huge keeping room fireplace and beehive oven. More was clearly yet to be discovered once dismantlement began but structurally the house was sound and still square. .
The next stop was to the county registry of deeds followed by visits to the local library and cemetery to sort out the homestead’s history. Here is what we know:..
Ebenezer Pierce (b. 1701, d. 1773) and his wife, Mary, (b. 1714, d. 1787) were married in the early 1730’s. We know they had 10 children: Ebenezer, Rachel, John, Richard, Abigaill, Isaac, Abigail, Sarah, Ephraim, and Eunice. When they built their home, sometime in the early 1740’s, about 70 families lived in what was then Groton. Throughout the 1750’s and 1760’s Pepperell continued to grow (despite war and the dreaded scarlet fever); by 1765 there were about 130 families living in 117 homes with a total population of around 758 persons. (We estimate maybe a dozen of these early homes still exist in Pepperell)..
When Ebenezer and Mary built their home the center chimney Georgian style two over two was popular. There was a small center hall with central stairs leading to the two upstairs rooms that were spacious, even by today’s standards. Downstairs the kitchen was on the right and the second large room on the left was probably the “master” bedroom where the parents and small children slept. Later, a back shed extension created the saltbox profile that substantially enlarged the house. That addition became the working kitchen..
And in typical Yankee style, additional outbuildings were attached to the home,.
Tragedy was never far from the front door. Of Ebenezer Sr. and Mary’s ten children, we think Ebenezer, Abigaill and Eunice died in infancy. John appears to have settled in Groton but we’re not sure where. We think he served in the Continental Army at the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, as he is listed on the muster list under the command of Colonel James Prescott whose regiment marched to Concord after the alarm of April 19th and then fought so bravely at the Battle of Bunker Hill. John may have been in and out of the army over the next several years, enlisting for short periods of time and being paid for his service by the town Selectmen. We don’t know much about his brother, Richard, except that he lived in Hollis. Isaac married a local girl, Sarah Blood, in 1769 and they had three children, - Sarah, Eunice, and Ebenezer - before Isaac died September, 1775 which sounds suspiciously as if he, too, had enlisted in the Continental Army and been killed. Pepperell was a hotbed of pro-rebel sentiment so our assumption about Isaac is not too far-fetched..
Ebenezer Sr. died in 1773 of a lung fever. With Richard established in Hollis, Ephraim may have been the only son interested in the family homestead as he was engaged to be married to Patty Chamberlain and was probably looking for a place to settle down. His father’s will had named his children as heirs to his estate and on January 5, 1776, “in the sixteenth year of His Majesty’s reign” Ephraim purchased the family homestead for the grand sum of 153 pounds sterling..
Luckily for us, the Pierces had acquired a family plot in the old Pepperell cemetery. Ebenezer Sr. and Mary are laid to rest there, as are various children and grandchildren..
Ephraim and his wife, Patty, settled into the home with his mother, Mary. Their first child, Patty, was born in 1778 and from that point onward, a new baby arrived roughly every two years: Sarah, Mary, Ephraim, Isaac, Abigail, Rachel, Wilder, Becca, Submit, and Asa. But fewer than half their children survived to adulthood. 1787-1788 was a particularly hard year. Grandmother Mary died from what was recorded as the black jaundice in December, 1787. Then, that following spring, Patty, Ephraim and Abigail died within six weeks of each other - clearly the result of some dreadful infectious disease. Three years later, Wilder died at age two; later Isaac would die leaving only Asa to carry on the family name - but he, too, died at the early age of 30..
These children, along with Ephraim and Patty, are buried in the Pepperell cemetery. There are poignant, yet hopeful, epitaphs written on the parents’ gravestones, reflecting the faith that sustained them through their long, productive lives. Ephraim’s reads as follows:.
Return my friends,
Dry up your tears,
Here I must lie until Christ appears,
And when my Jesus doth me call,
I hope in bliss to meet you all..
And Patty’s:
Friends and Physicians could not save
My mortal body from the grave.
Nor can the grave confine me here
When Christ shall me to appear..
As we rebuild the Ebenezer Pierce homestead, let’s continue to remember the strong, kindly spirit of these early American families who worked so hard to sustain their families and build their communities..
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1701 - 1773 (72 years)
