Researching 70 Pond Street

The current owner of 70 Pond Street has applied for a partial demolition permit to remove an ell at the back of the house and replace it with an addition. This triggers the provisions of Easton's Demolition Review Bylaw which begins with an investigation of the history of the home. Without dealing with the merits of the proposal, I thought it might be interesting to discover exactly what we can know about an old house.

This kind of research became easier in 2010 thanks to the CPA and the Massachusetts Historical Commission which financed a historical survey by Kathryn Grover and Neil Larson. The pair will be expanding the survey in North Easton and adding Furnace Village this year. Grover and Larson are historians so each survey reads like a little story, and the story of 70 Pond Street is an interesting one.

Pond Street didn't become an official street in North Easton until 1881, but it was in use much earlier. It's noted in an 1850 deed, and in the 1870s and 1880s it is sometimes called the "coal road" probably because coal was carried along it to feed the furnaces on the Island, the original location of the Shovel Shop. The first house on the road, 46 Pond Street is itself a mystery. It is generally assumed to have been built in 1792 by a member of the Leonard family, but stylistically it seems older so perhaps it was moved from another location.  It was the original home of Oliver Ames when he moved to Easton in 1803. By 1855 there were seven houses on Pond Street. In 1850 the Ameses had given land on the north side of Pond Street for a Catholic Chapel and directly across the street  was the home of John and Margaret McDavit which many years later got the address 70 Pond Street. This is probably the third oldest house built on the street. John McDavitt was listed in the 1840 census as a resident of North Easton. He may have been the John McDavitt, servant, born in Ireland, who arrived in Boston in 1835. He was, therefore, one of the first Irishmen to come to Easton arriving well before the potato famine. Chaffin notes that until 1849 only about 45 Catholics lived in town. It is probably no coincidence that the first Catholic Chapel was located across the street from McDavitt's house since Pond Street was a focal point of the early Irish community. By 1850 the 52 year old shovel worker was doing very well owning $1,000 worth of real property. The 1853 valuation shows he owned two buildings and 3/4 acres of land. McDavitt, by then a widower, lived in town until at least 1880. Around 1860 he sold this house to the Ames Company who used it as a tenement until it passed into private hands in 1931.  It seems probable that early arrivals like McDavitt and neighbor Henry McArdle  facilitated the integration of later immigrants into the community and served as leaders of the early Irish community.