 |
||||
|
Home ~ History ~ Visit Us ~ Friends ~ Calendar ~ Pictures ~ Links ~ Contact Us |
||||
| Property |
Deacon Job Lane (1689-1762), John’s oldest son, built the present
house on his parcel of land about the time of his marriage to Martha Ruggles in
1713. The house was half the size it is today, a saltbox consisting of three
small rooms downstairs and a bedchamber and a garret above.
Six of Martha and Job’s children grew up here. The house was not to be enlarged to its present size for another hundred years. Thus, the East Side of the house is Georgian in character, while the West is Federal. The homestead stayed in the Lane family for about a hundred and thirty years, passing to Deacon Job’s son and grandsons who variously lived there or rented it. The last Lane to live in the house was Oliver Abbott (1800-1842). It was Oliver who doubled the size of the house, remodeled all of the fireplaces, and commissioned the wonderful murals (thought to be painted by Rufus Porter), that decorate the parlor walls. Mr. Hiram L. Dutton, of Andover, Massachusetts, bought the farm in 1843, and it stayed in the Dutton family for another hundred and thirty year. Many Bedford residents can still remember Lillian and Warren Dutton, and especially Lillian’s highly successful mail order herb business. The Bedford Garden Club now maintains a period kitchen garden at the house that includes descendants of those same herbs. In 1972, when the property came on the market again, Bedford Town Historian Louise K. Brown had the foresight to buy it from the Duttons in the hope that the Town of Bedford would someday acquire it. A year later, Bedford Town Meeting voted to buy it, and the Bedford Historical Preservation Commission was charged to over see it. In 1978, the Friends of the Job Lane House, Inc. was formed to assist the Commission in its restoration and to operate it as an historic farmhouse museum. Several of Bedford’s organizations restored the rooms, namely the Bedford Minuteman Company, the Bedford Historical Society, the Bedford Woman’s Community Club, the Social Club, the Brown Family, the Rotary Club and the Friends of the Job Lane House. After years of hard work, the Job Lane House was opened to the public in 1983. |
|||
|
|
||||