Newton History Museum

The Homestead's
200th Anniversary
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Norumbega
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Newton Salutes

The Jackson Homestead: The First 200 Years

The Jackson Homestead has a rich 200 year history. Newton has changed greatly over the span of those years, and so has the house as it has adapted to the times and its residents. Discover these changes throughout the house, and learn more about how the house was built, used, and altered.

This exhibit brings together historic images, original text written by family members, and contemporary expert opinions to tell the story of the Jackson Homestead's first 200 years. Displayed throughout the house, each panel connects to the specific history of its location. Come discover the changes a structure can go through over the course of 200 years.

The Old Homestead

Generations of the Jackson family lived at the Homestead from 1809 into the 20th Century, when Brownie was a pampered resident.

The building of the present house was an event of public interest, it being a fine house for the time and Newton being so small a town that few houses were built in a year. . . The granite underpinning was all hauled by oxen from Quincy, the beams which support the house . . . were drawn in the same way. The gutters were each a single trunk of a tree hollowed out with an adze; the door-steps are a solid beam a foot and a half thick. All the window glass, called crown glass, was imported from England.

A huge barn was near the house and close by a corn barn with sloping sides standing on high granite posts to keep the rats out. The garden was mostly given up to fruit trees but there were on its outer edge lilacs grown in the shape of trees . . . . and there is also a rose, a Provence rose, which was Grandmother's.

-- from Annals of the Old Homestead, 1894, by Ellen Jackson.

The Federal Style

In 1809, Major Timothy Jackson tore down the old saltbox house that had stood on this site since 1670 and built the existing Jackson Homestead in the Federal style.

The Federal period of architecture corresponds to the development of the new Republic of the United States. It was a significant departure from the Georgian period of the 18th century, featuring a series of lighter elements that gave houses a new look.

The fanlight over the Homestead's front door is a hallmark of the federal style.

These elements included doors with elliptical "fanlights," larger windows with fewer panes, and elaborate moldings. Unlike the traditional earlier central chimney house it replaced, the Jackson Homestead was a central hall house with four main rooms and end chimneys with smaller, more efficient fireplaces. The interior spaces were larger, higher and better lit.

What we have come to know as Federal Architecture consists of new style elements applied to traditional building frames Builders used pattern books and "builder's guides" that provided them with the latest designs and layouts. While the structural forms often remained the same the new look was easily added by changing windows, doors and cornices.

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
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