Quick History Stops: Topsfield, MA, Part 1

After visiting the Trustee’s Appleton Farms, South Hamilton, and Wenham, I finished up my day with a walk around Topsfield. I visited Topsfield two more times within a six-week period, and I took so many pictures of the buildings and monuments that I am turning these quick history stops into a three-part miniseries. Many buildings along Main Street are part of the Topsfield Town Common District, which has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1976.

Kimball Manor is a Queen Anne style house constructed in 1889. According to Houses and Buildings of Topsfield, Massachusetts by Charles Lawrence Bond for the Topsfield Historical Society, the mansion is named for Mary Stone Kimbell, single mother of five children whose second husband, William Briggs Kimball, had died the year before in 1888. The Bouchard family bought the house in 1921 and may have sold the property in 1996. That owner seems to have let it fall into disrepair until it was purchased by flippers in 2014. Today, the building is used by SPMD, a company that assists drug and medical device manufacturers create compliance systems to build safe products. Next door is First Rose of Lima Parish, which partners with St. Agnes Parish in Middleton, MA. The Bouchard family was Catholic and built a chapel on their property around 1921, since Catholic services were previously held at Town Hall. The chapel became a formal church in 1949.

The current Institution for Savings Bank was built in 1809 for Thomas Meady as a private home, store, and tavern. As the main destination in the town, it became known as The Topsfield House. Other businesses in the building have included a dress shop, grocery, restaurant, thrift store, and bowling alley. As for the bank, this business began in Newburyport in 1820 and has since expanded across the North Shore. Across the street, the post office is a relatively recent build from 1963, the year that the ZIP (Zone Improvement Plan) code was created.

The former train station stands on Grove Street near the post office. This was the second train station, as it was built in 1896 while the original moved behind what is now Institution for Savings Bank in 1897 and turned into a house. Because of the age of the buildings, Topsfield buildings boast unique architectural features. At 27 Main Street, now rendered to a few small businesses, the building looks to be a Colonial Revival with unusual faux additions, such as an extension of the second floor above a space mimicking a saltbox kitchen. At 52 and 54 Main Street is a strangely combined house. The building on the left was built in 1845 with remodeling to add a bump-out window. It is attached to what appears to be a first period or postmedieval revival house with a pair of gables and casement windows.

Two of the oldest extant buildings in Topsfield are maintained by Topsfield Historical Society. Parson Capen House was built around 1683. Joseph Capen was the town minister for about forty years and is legendarily buried where the original meeting house stood. His house was fancy for the time, as the second story overhangs the first, earning it a spot on the National Register of Historic Places in 1966. The reconstructed Gould Barn from 1710 was originally located in a different part of town but dismantled and moved to the current site in 1982. The Gould family had lived in the area since about 1639, the family patriarch being Zaccheus Gould. Reports do not mention if he was a wee little man. The barn builder was most likely John Gould, grandson of Zaccheus, who would have inherited the property from his father, also called John, in 1710.

My final stop for this section was the two-and-a-half story house with an ell connected to a barn on 1 Washington Street or 94 Main Street, depending on the entrance. While in need of a paint job, the building demonstrates the “Yankee ingenuity” behind old New England houses. The oldest part of the house was built for the Stone family from Marlborough, NH in 1832, as Stillman Stone and his wife/second cousin Sarah Mason Stone just had their first child, also called Sarah. Baby Sarah died that year, along with the second baby Harriet. Houses and Buildings stated that mother Sarah also died around that time. However, since the couple moved back home to Marlborough, had three more children, and Sarah’s headstone lists her death year as 1887 at age eighty-one, the town rumors were untrue. I wonder what happened to cause such an incorrect fact to be included in what appears to be a well-researched book.