Jason Russell House

About 1740, Jason Russell (1716–1775), a relatively^[quantify] prosperous farmer and militiaman, constructed the house on pasture land he inherited in 1738. To have the front facing south, in the New England tradition, he placed the north side angled toward the Concord Road (now Massachusetts Avenue), so that the east-facing front was facing slightly south. The house is a typical New England farmhouse with five windows across the front, a door in the center and a large chimney in the middle of a pitched roof. There is some evidence that components in the hall (or kitchen) and its chamber above, as well as the garret, were salvaged from Grandfather Jason's original structure of 1680. The hall and parlor of the house, with their chambers and the garret, are essentially unchanged today, although in 1814 a porch (or vestibule) was added to the front door, and further extensions were subsequently added to the sides around 1863. Inside the central part are four rooms: to the left of the entry are the kitchen and children's chamber (above), and to the right, the parlor and parlor chamber. The kitchen ceiling retains its original whitewash and sponge painting decorative surface treatment. The outside walls may have been plastered originally, but in 1924, when the house was restored, wood sheathing was installed.^[1]

Robert Nylander proposed in 1964 that the house was built in two stages; however, research conducted in 2012 by the Dendrochronology Laboratory at Oxford University confirms that the home was erected during a single campaign in 1745, as had been maintained by Russell family lore.^[2] The Oxford study also revealed that many of the timbers used in the house were made from lumber cut in 1684–85 or earlier and was probably salvaged from an older building on the property.^[3]

 

On April 19, 1775, the house and its surrounding yard was the site of the bloodiest conflict of the first battle in the Revolutionary War, resulting in more colonial troop deaths than anywhere else along the battle road. As British troops marched back towards Boston, heavy fighting occurred along their route through Arlington (then Menotomy). Brigadier-General Hugh Percy gave orders to clear every dwelling to eliminate snipers, and houses along the way were ransacked and set afire by the retreating British. The running battle continued to Jason Russell's house, where Russell was joined by men from Beverly, Danvers, Lynn, Salem, Dedham, and Needham at his house.

The history of the Jason Russell House on April 19, 1775, is also the history of a family. Jason and Elizabeth Russell had raised six surviving children here. Three had married and moved to Mason, New Hampshire; a fourth, Thomas had established a grocery store across the street in 1773^[4] and had married the following year.^[5] Remaining at home were Elizabeth (called Betsey by the family), who was 18, and Noah, who had just turned 12 the previous month.^[6]

But that day the history of the house and yard became the history of a whole region as it became part of the Battle of Menotomy.

Around midnight of the night before, a rider named Paul Revere had passed the house on his mission to warn that the British regulars (soldiers) would be coming by on their way to Lexington and, ultimately, to Concord.

About half an hour later William Dawes would pass by with the same message.^[7]

And around 2 in the morning about 700 troops under the command of Lieutenant Col. Francis Smith would march “quietly” by.^[8]

Meanwhile, the rides of Revere and Dawes triggered a flexible notification system (express riders as well as bells, drums, alarm guns, bonfires, and a trumpet) to let the towns within 25 miles of Boston know that a sizable body of troops was on the move. Accordingly, militias and minutemen groups from many outlying communities assembled and began marches that would eventually bring them to Jason Russell’s property.^[9]

Around 9 am troops began to assemble in Danvers, including the part that is now Peabody, comprising two companies of minutemen under Israel Hutchinson and Gideon Foster as well as three militias under Samuel Flint, Samuel Eppes, and Jeremiah Page. These left at different times and via different routes but all arrived in Menotomy about the same time.^[10] One body of minutemen gathered at the Bell Tavern, at the corner of what is now Main and Washington in Peabody. Setting out at 10, they covered 16 miles in 4 hours, to arrive in Menotomy by early afternoon.^[11] The Town of Beverly also contributed three companies of militia, some of whom were trained as minutemen.^[12] In all, perhaps 300 men assembled from just Danvers, Peabody, and Beverly.^[13]

Around noon or so Jason Russell, who is “old” (59^[14]) and lame, starts bringing his family up for safety to the George Prentiss house, beyond the ridge of the hill behind the house, where they can be safe with others. But partway up, he lets the family go on alone and returns “to look after things at home.”^[15] On his arrival, patriot militias are already stationing themselves around the house. From bundles of shingles that were lying about, as Jason had been preparing to reshingle, he and some patriot militias form a barricade behind his gate, thinking this would be a good place to fire on the enemy as they return.^[16]

Other men from Danvers go into a “walled enclosure” and reinforce that protection with additional shingles.^[17] Still other militias station themselves among the trees on the property, such as those in the orchard on the slope behind (on the south side of) the house. Danvers's Gideon Foster, having been warned by the more experienced Hutchinson of the possibility of a flanking attack, also sets up among the trees rather than behind barricades.^[18]

Jason and the patriot militias are positioned somewhat back from the road itself. A little west of Russell’s house, the land rises on the near side of the road, somewhat obscuring the patriots’ view of the approaching armies – and vice versa.^[19] A mill pond lying on the far side of the road has a “margin” that extends across to the space in front of the patriots.^[20] A brook that flows between Russell’s house and that of his neighbor across the road^[21] may have marked the near edge of the margin.

“Unfortunately, Jason Russell and the others had made one great miscalculation….”^[22] Around four o'clock the British leave the Foot of the Rocks, about a mile up the road, and although the main column is coming by the main road, flanking parties are also advancing on both sides of the road.^[23] The patriots are not counting on having to deal with flanking parties.^[24]

While the troops are on their way, Ammi Cutter, Jason’s neighbor on the north side of the road, sees Russell among the soldiers, crosses over the road and the brook, and begs Jason to go to a safer spot. But Jason replies, “And Englishman’s home is his castle,” and stays with the waiting ambush.^[25] As Cutter returns across the hollow, the north side flanking party spots him and takes pot shots at him. He manages to reach the old mill, where he trips and falls among some logs, as bullets send chips of bark around him. Fortunately, the flanking party leaves him for dead and passes on.^[26]

Meanwhile the southside flankers come upon the patriots stationed on the slope south of the house.^[27] Jotham Webb, a minuteman serving under Danvers’ Colonel Hutchinson,^[28] is “shot through the body and killed by the first fire.”^[29] Abednego Ramsdell of Lynn also falls “immediately”^[30].^[31]

 

Russell is outside his house and joins the minutemen as they flee toward it. Being old and slow, he is in the rear and gets shot twice as he reaches his own doorway and is then stabbed eleven times with bayonets. The British then rush into the house and engage its occupants, prompting the minutemen to find shelter. Eight minutemen make it to the basement and fire up the stairs.^[32]

Smith, in his address of 1864, citing as his sources Col. Thomas Russell and Mrs. Lydia Russell Teel (both being grandchildren of the fallen Jason Russell) reported that “Our people gathered up the Americans who were killed in and about the house, and laid them side by side in the south room, and when Mrs. Russell came back to her home she found them there, weltering in their own blood, her husband and eleven others. She said that the blood in the room was almost ankle deep. The house itself was riddled with bullets, and the marks of them in many places are still visible. The same blood-stained floor remained on that room till a year ago.”^[33]

The twelve were soon brought by oxen-drawn sled to the Precinct burying ground and buried in a mass grave, clothes and all, although the bodies were neatly laid out.^[34] However, a Capt. William Adams, who lived nearby, is reported to have brought a sheet from his house for Jason himself, as he could not bear to see his neighbor buried without a winding-sheet.^[35]

A plain obelisk of New Hampshire granite was later raised above the grave. The inscription on the monument reads:

Erected by the Inhabitants of West Cambridge, A.D. 1848, over the common grave of Jason Russell, Jason Winship, Jabez Wyman and nine others, who were slain in this town by the British Troops on their retreat from the Battles of Lexington and Concord, April 19th, 1775. Being among the first to lay down their lives in the struggle for American Independence.^[36]

The nine others, forgotten at the time the monument was erected, have since been identified as: John Bacon, Amos Mills, Jonathan Parker, Nathan Chamberlain of Needham, William Flint, Thomas Hadley, Abednego Ramsdell of Lynn, Elias Haven of Dedham and Benjamin Pierce of Salem.^[37]

Two of the twelve, Jabez Wyman and Jacob Winship -- who were buried together with the other ten -- were killed not at the Jason Russell House, but further down the road at Cooper's tavern, and must have been placed with the others after the fighting had ceased. Both were unarmed noncombatants.^[38] Though initially identified by the innkeepers simply as "two elderly gentlemen,"^[39] they were definitely identified by July of that same year.^[40]

Jason Russell's estate was settled in 1776. His house and 117 acres of land were divided between Noah, his only son left at home, and his widow, Elizabeth. She received the 17 acres the house was standing on together with half the house, "Libberty to ues the oven when wanted" and additional privileges of use, including space in the barn. Noah received the other half of the house, half the barn and some lands. Other children got other parts of the estate. Elizabeth Russell lived in her northerly rooms until the eleventh of August 1786 when she died aged 65.^[41]

• Battle of Menotomy
• National Register of Historic Places listings in Arlington, Massachusetts

• Peabody Historical Society, "April 19, 1775 - Part 1" (ca. 2020), Peabody Historical Society & Museum, accessed October 26,2024.
• Chase, Ellen (1910), Beginnings of the American Revolution -- Based on Contemporary Letters Diaries and Other Documents, New York: The Baker and Taylor Company, Vol. III.
• Cutter, Benjamin and William R. (1880). History of the Town of Arlington, Massachusetts. Boston: David Clapp & Son.
• Fischer, David Hackett (1994), Paul Revere’s Ride, New York: Oxford University Press.
• Hanson, John Wesley (1848), History of the town of Danvers, from its early settlement to the year 1848. Danvers: the author.
• King, Daniel P. (1835), “An address commemorative of seven young men of Danvers, who were slain in the battle of Lexington; delivered in the Old South meeting house, in Danvers, on the sixtieth anniversary of the battle. With notes,” Salem: W. & S. B. Ives.
• Lewis, Alonzo (1848), History of Lynn, Boston: J. B. Eastburn
• Nylander, Robert Harrington (1964). "Jason Russell and His House in Menotomy," Old Time New England, LV(2): 29-42.
• Parker, Charles S. (1907), Town of Arlington Past and Present: A Narrative of Larger Events and Important Changes in the Village Precinct and Town from 1637 to 1907, Arlington, C. S. Parker & Son, Publishers
• Philbrick, Nathaniel (2013), Bunker Hill -- A City, a Siege, a Revolution, New York: Viking.
• Smith, Samuel Abbot (1864). West Cambridge on the Nineteenth of April, 1775. Boston: Alfred Mudge & Son.

 

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Jason Russell House.

• Arlington Historical Society page on the house