Towards the end of last year, The Jackson Homestead, Newton’s Museum and Historical Society, was able to acquire a collection of documents that for many generations had been in the possession of the Hammond family.

Thomas Hammond and his wife, Elizabeth, were both born in Lavenham in England. In the 1630s they emigrated to Hingham, Massachusetts where they lived for a number of years before moving to Newton (then Cambridge Village). There, with Vincent Druce, Hammond bought several hundred acres of what is now Chestnut Hill. He and Druce held the land in common until 1664. When they divided it, Druce took his share mostly in Brookline, and Hammond took his, which included the pond that bears his name, in Newton.

Thomas and Elizabeth had two sons, Thomas (1630-1678) and Nathaniel. Nathaniel built the house at 9 Old Orchard Road, now the second oldest house in Newton and, until it was modernized after World War I, an outstanding example of an early colonial farmstead. Thomas Jr. and his wife, another Elizabeth, had many children, among them another Thomas (1666-1738). This Thomas’s wife, Mehitable, has the (posthumous) distinction of having her grave marked by the only slate marker in Newton initialed by its carver, John Noyse.

Thomas and Mehitable’s son, John, was one of the earliest residents in Newton Highlands. An area almost entirely unsettled until the second quarter of the eighteenth century, it was part of the one-thousand-acre grant to John Haynes in 1634. When, shortly afterwards, Haynes moved to Connecticut (where he became the first governor), he kept the farm. It wad handed down through successive generations (none of whom lived in Newton) until just over 300 acres was inherited by the Reverend Jared Eliot. It was this land that John Hammond bought. Eliot, a grandson of the "Apostle to the Indians," was a person of note in his own right, and his signature on his deed to Hammond is a welcome addition to the Homestead’s document collection.

John Hammond’s son, Joshua, married Elizabeth Prentice. Descended from two of Newton’s founding families, it is almost certainly she who contributed the Jackson and Prentice papers to the collection. Both her maternal grandfather, Deacon Edward Jackson (1652-1727) and her uncle Samuel had served as town clerk and treasurer. Her great-grandfather Edward built the first house on the site of the Jackson Homestead. Elizabeth’s father, Thomas Prentice (1676-1730) was the grandson of one of Newton’s most colorful personalities, another Thomas Prentice (1621-1710), who lead a troop of horse in King Philip’s War, killed a bear with an ax, held numerous public offices, and was buried under arms. A deed of gift for land in Pequot Country from the older Thomas to the younger is one of the earliest documents in the collection (1708).

Joshua and Elizabeth had one son, William, who left Newton in 1808, taking, it seems fair to assume, the family papers with him to Maine, where they remained for 188 years.

The papers range from documents that are rare, if not unique, to deeds, agreements, receipts and other memorabilia generated by a Newton family, that are typical of an eighteenth century community. Of greatest interest are, perhaps, six that are, in fact, public documents; it was not unusual at that time for town officers to keep official documents at home so that over time, they became part of family collections. Among these are:

• "A true copy" of a petition presented to the General Court in 1715 by residents in the north section of the town requesting that, at least for a time, the meeting house remain where it then stood (at the corner of Cotton and Centre streets). This was in response to a 1712 petition (now in the City Archives) from residents in the southern part of town to have the building moved to a more central location.

• The deed from Nathaniel Parker to the selectmen for land on the road from Watertown to Dedham. This site, at the corner of Centre and Homer streets, had been determined by a surveyor to be close to "the geographical centre" of the town where, as directed by the General Court, the new meeting house was to be built. The present building, erected by the First Church in Newton in 1906, is the fourth on the site.

• The pay roll for officers and men in the Newton militia during Shays’s Rebellion. This seems to be the only record of who they were and how long they served. William Hammond was the captain; Newton supported the government.

• A declaration by William Patten (or Pattin) that he had been paid for the services of Busszealell (sic) Sawyer whom he had hired to serve in his place under Captain Thomas Prentice (probably 1676-1730), and whose name, as well as that of Patten had been included by mistake in the muster roll (1709), so the militia had to pay twice. (There had been an unsuccessful expedition to Canada the previous year in retaliation for attack on "frontier towns" in New England by the French and Indians.

• A request, unsigned and undated, for the printing of three sermons delivered by Mr. Nathan Prince. Prince was one of several ministers who supplied the pulpit in Newton between the death of the Reverend Jonas Meriam in 1780 and the ordination of Reverend Jonathan Homer in 1782.

• An indenture binding James Dochardee to Joseph Sanders, Master of the ship Merymeting (sic), of Boston for seven years, in return for a passage from Ireland, and including food, lodging etc., 1729.

In addition there are personal notes, business memoranda, receipts for articles such a nails, "sole leather", and "youk" of oxen and many for cattle, fifty-three documents in all.

Historic Newton/The Jackson Homestead and Museum Historic Newton is a public-private partnership between the City of Newton and the Newton Historical Society, Inc, a non-profit organization Questions or comments: Email © 2010 Historic Newton