Historic New England: Winslow Crocker House
At last, I reach the conclusion of my journey to visit all thirty-eight properties owned by Historic New England (HNE). In late September 2023, I made a special day trip to Yarmouth, MA on Cape Cod to visit several historic sites. My first major history stop was Winslow Crocker House, built in nearby West Barnstable around 1780 by maritime trader Winslow Crocker. I received an especially warm welcome from the excellent guides and celebrated my completion of the HNE passport book. This lovingly renovated home filled with antique furniture was the perfect way to bring this phase of my adventure to a close.
Crocker was not an ordinary colonial home owner. Before he built the house, he worked as a privateer during the American Revolutionary War. This was a fairly common occupation for men in coastal Massachusetts and New Hampshire at this time, or any coastal city in the British Empire, as I have visited buildings associated with privateers Jonathan Hamilton (HNE’s Hamilton House), John Paul Jones (John Paul Jones House), William Nichols and Moses Brown II (Custom House Maritime Museum), and two homes owned by Nathaniel Tracey (HNE’s Spencer-Peirce-Little Farm and Tracy Mansion), not to mention countless references to Francis Drake during my trip to the Dominican Republic. Besides a brief imprisonment in Nova Scotia, Crocker did well for himself during the war and as a merchant afterwards, which allowed him to build an unusually large house with high-end finishes. For over a hundred and fifty years, until the 1930s, many generations of Crockers enjoyed the house.
The house changed hands in 1935 when wealthy, historically minded heiress Mary Thacher bought the property as a place to store her antique furniture collection. In the middle of the Great Depression, she had the house taken apart and reassembled next door to her ancestral home on the corner of Thacher Street and Main Street, which was built by her multi-great-grandfather Colonel John Thacher around 1680. Thacher was a big fan of museums and designed the home to become a museum for her furniture once she could no longer live there. Because of this goal, the house was renovated in a less than historically accurate style, allowing the furniture to be the focus of each room.
Besides collecting furniture, Thacher had a range of other interests. She enjoyed learning her family history and genealogy. She discovered that Col. Thacher had a tragic backstory: he was born in 1639, four years after his older half-siblings drowned in a 1635 shipwreck. A more positive story from the tour was Thacher’s love of fun exercise, including biking, golfing, and swimming. Like the Little family of Cogswell’s Grant, a HNE property that I visited both in-person and virtually, Thacher loved antiquing and finding bargains, which meant her collection became large and almost overwhelming.
Similar to other rich history buffs of early 20th century New England, Thacher knew William Sumner Appleton Jr. She planned to give her houses to his Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities (SPNEA), the precursor to HNE, upon her death. Thacher outlived Appleton by nine years. She passed away in 1956 at age eighty-eight. HNE has fulfilled Thacher’s dream of having a house museum ever since. My favorite decor in the house included a lamp with a glass shade decorate with scenes from the countryside and set on a table topped with black and white delft tile, a bright yellow chair in the sitting room, and a green-and-pink bedspread in the southwest chamber.
Winslow Crocker House is open on Saturdays and Sundays from 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. during the regular season from June through October. Tours are on the hour and last about 45 minutes. Tickets are standard HNE small house pricing: $10 for adults, $9 for seniors and students, $5 for children, and $0 for HNE members (like me!). Like most historic homes, the building is not accessible to those using wheelchairs or with limited mobility. No virtual tour is available at this time. Parking is on Strawberry Lane, a roundabout down the street near the Captain Bangs Hallet House and Edward Gorey House.
Abby Epplett’s Rating System
Experience: 9/10
Accessibility: 5/10