From Its Beginning to Present Day
What Happened To The Peak House Over Time
Benjamin Clark, second son of Joseph and Alice/Alyse (Pepper) Clark, was born 9 Feb 1643 in Dedham, Norfolk, MA. He married 19 Nov 1665 in Dedham Dorcas Morse b. 24 Aug 1645 in Dedham, daughter of Joseph and Hannah (Phillips) Morse. In 1652 Benjamin, his parents, and eight siblings removed to Medfield, Norfolk, MA.
In 1668 Benjamin, age 25, obtained “a grant for a house lot ‘near the way as you go out at Nantasket.’ His house was on Main Street, opposite where Pound Street enters it. He was burned out by the Indians in 1676, but rebuilt upon the same spot.” (William Smith Tilden, History of the Town of Medfield Massachusetts 1650-1886, Boston, George Ellis Publisher, 1887, page 348.) Legend has it that the rebuilding year was 1680 and the spot was about 100 feet north of the present Peak House. (Agnes Ord, The Peak House, undated article.) This rebuilt house became home to twelve persons in Benjamin’s family though not all at the same time. Childhood deaths and marriages reduced their number over time.
Legend has it that Benjamin enlarged his second home before 1713 when his youngest son Seth Sr. married Abigail Metcalf. By that date, all of Benjamin and Dorcas’ children had either died or moved out because of marriage. Joined then by his parents, Seth and Abigail and their nine children presumably resided over time in this enlarged home but not all at the same time. Again, childhood deaths and marriages reduced their number over time. Seth Sr. died in 1756 and his wife Abigail probably lived in this second Benjamin/Seth Sr. house until her death in 1788.
After deeding the house to Seth Jr. in 1743, it appears Seth Sr. lived there until his death in 1756. According to Tilden, Seth Jr. “came into possession of the place belonging to his father and grandfather.” (William Smith Tilden, History of the Town of Medfield Massachusetts 1650-1886, Boston, George Ellis Publisher, 1887, page 355.) When this 1680 house, in which Benjamin and Seth Sr. and Seth Jr. had all resided at different times, became decayed, it was Seth Jr. who moved a surviving smaller portion to its present location around 1762. (Ibid., page 348.)
Abbott Lowell Cummings, a noted architectural historian, gave credence to the house’s subsequent 1762 relocation. “The existing foundation is eighteenth rather than seventeenth century in character which confirms a well-authenticated local tradition that the frame, of single-room plan, a story and a half high, has been moved to this site. It is of further significance that there is no chimney bay in the conventional sense, nor any evidence for its former presence. We may be dealing, therefore, with a portion only of an early house. If erected in the immediate vicinity the builder was probably Benjamin Clark who owned the land and whose original dwelling here was burned when Medfield was fired by the Indians on February 21, 1676… (Abbott Lowell Cummings, Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 1979, Volume 51: Architecture in Colonial Massachusetts, Page 163.)
Today
Today it is revered as an iconic treasure dating from Medfield’s early history. The house’s location beside the Commonwealth’s second busiest undivided highway is a far cry from the Clark’s era when nothing traveled faster than a horse. In 1975, the Peak House was placed on the National Register of Historic Places, an honor befitting its historical legacy.