Jabez Weston House : 86 West Street

86 West Street : Jabez Weston House. This house marks a locus of very early town development, when West Street marked the western boundary of town settlement. The Weston family owned a great deal of land in this area. This home was built in the late 1700's, across the street from a pre-1765 Weston family homestead. Its style was Georgian Federal with 5 bays, 2 stories, and a central front door. It is believed that two houses were joined to create the current structure thus the two front doors. The eastern extension was added soon after the house was built. According to Weston family lore, the first immigrant, John Weston, left England and stowed away on a ship bound for Salem, Massachusetts, about 350 years ago. He worked in Salem and made his way to Reading, and in 1653 his marriage to Sarah Fitch was the first recorded marriage in Reading. They had eight children, many of whom filled important positions in town. Jabez Weston, who built this house, was of the fourth generation of Westons in Reading. Born in 1741, he is listed as a Revolutionary soldier, being a member of a training band under Captain Thomas Eaton. Historians think that a grandson of Sarah and John, Isaac, left a house near this location to this son, Jabez, and grandson, Abijah, and that Jabez tired of sharing a house with his nephew's family, and so built this home, circa 1779, on land that he owned. The house eventually passed to Jabez's grandson, Reuben, an ardent abolitionist, who was credited with helping to build Lyceum Hall near the intersection of Ash, Main, and Haven Streets in 1854, possibly to secure a meeting place for abolitionists to hold their antislavery meetings. Weston descendants owned the house until 1954.

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National Register of Historic Places ID: 84002846

Institution: Reading Public Library

Producer: Reading Public Library

Narrator: Anna Foulds

Massachusetts--Middlesex (county)--Reading

86 West Street (Reading, Mass.)

Walkable Reading

03-2010

audio/mpeg

image/jpeg

eng

Reading, Mass. : Walkable Reading

Architecture, Domestic

Historic buildings

Dwellings

Weston, Jabez

sound recording-nonmusical

still image

Sound recordings

Photographs