The Dustin-Duston Garrison House or Dustin House is a historic
First Period house in
Haverhill, Massachusetts
Haverhill ( ) is a city in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States. Haverhill is located 35 miles north of Boston on the New Hampshire border and about 17 miles from the Atlantic Ocean. The population was 67,787 at the 2020 United States Cen ...
. Built about 1700, it is one of a very small number of surviving period houses built out of brick in Massachusetts. It is also notable for its association with the Dustin or Duston family;
Hannah Duston was famously captured by Native Americans during a
1697 attack on Haverhill, probably while this house was under construction. The house was added to the
National Register of Historic Places in 1990.
Description and history
The Dustin House stands in what is now a rural-residential area of northern Haverhill, on the east side of Hilldale Avenue opposite a golf course. It is set on a rise facing south. It is a -story brick building, with a gabled roof and single end chimney. The main facade is three bays wide, with the entrance set in the leftmost bay. The brick on the facade and east side is laid in Flemish bond, with short-end bricks highlighted by their blackened ends. Window and door openings are topped by segmented arches, and there is a stringcourse of corbelled brickwork between the first and second floors. The brick exhibits patching in a number of places, where openings were once made but afterwards closed during restoration.
The house is believed to have been under construction by farmer and brick-maker Thomas Duston at the time of the
1697 attack on Haverhill during
King William's War. It was during this raid that his wife,
Hannah Duston, in bed at their existing home a half mile away, was captured by Native Americans.
Cotton Mather
Cotton Mather (; February 12, 1663 – February 13, 1728) was a New England Puritan clergyman and a prolific writer. Educated at Harvard College, in 1685 he joined his father Increase as minister of the Congregationalist Old North Meeting H ...
later wrote a popular
captivity narrative about her experience.
Dustin Griffin (2014). "Cotton Mather and the Emerson Family," ''Massachusetts Historical Review,'' 16, 1-48.
doi:10.5224/masshistrevi.16.1.0001
Deed research however, suggests that the Dustins never occupied this house, and that it was probably built for the Kimball family. The house is one of a very small number of brick houses in eastern Massachusetts from the First Period of colonial architecture, and consequently provides an important window into masonry techniques of the period. Its form is also unusual for northeastern Massachusetts, and more closely resembles the stone-enders of early Rhode Island. The building underwent a major restoration in 1946 after its acquisition by a Dustin family association.[
The house is now owned and governed by the Dustin-Duston Garrison House Association. The house opens periodically for tours during the summer and fall.
]
See also
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References
{{National Register of Historic Places in Massachusetts
Houses in Haverhill, Massachusetts
Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Essex County, Massachusetts
Houses completed in 1698
1698 establishments in Massachusetts