Collections Inventory for the Lexington Historical Society

The Hancock-Clarke House in Lexington, Massachusetts, was home to the town’s 18th-century ministers. The Lexington Historical Society has preserved the house both for its architectural importance and because John Hancock and John Adams were staying there on the evening of April 18th-19th, 1775, when Paul Revere stopped at the house during his famous ride to warn them of the approaching British troops. In order to preserve the house, the Lexington Historical Society purchased it and moved it across the street in 1896. In the 1960s, they acquired the house’s original site and arranged for excavations by Roland Robbins prior to moving the house back to its traditional location. Robbins relocated the foundation of the house and also discovered four previously unknown cellar holes. The collections from all of these cellars are being inventoried and undergoing preliminary analyses by the Fiske Center. Three of the newly discovered cellar holes contained rich deposits of artifacts from the 1720s through the early 1740s, the time that the Hancock family occupied the property. One of these was a primary trash deposit; the other two contained redeposited sheet refuse. Recent architectural analyses have shown that the standing structure was built in 1737-1738. These other filled cellars, therefore, probably represent the foundations of earlier buildings, filled shortly after the move to the new house. The collection contains a full range of domestic material culture, but is particularly noteworthy for its assemblage of personal adornment items, reconstructable redware vessels, tin-glazed wares, and early white slip-dipped stoneware.