Suffolk Resolves House

É Moved Original Site residence beside the Neponset River in Milton Village, now stands atop a tree-studded knoll in one of Milton's attractive residential neighborhoods. Open fields and woods flank the property on two sides. Landscape features include 18th century-style flower and vegetable gardens. In order to ensure the preservation of the property, the deed to the Suffolk Resolves House was given to the Milton Historical Society in 1950. However, the Society was unable to finance restoration and the house was threatened with destruc- tion. The Society then deeded the house to Dr. and Mrs. James Ayer and it was moved to their property on Canton Avenue later the same year. At that time the building was repaired and restored.

It was later deeded back to the Milton Historical Society, which operates the property as a museum. 0.3 The wooden clapboard building has two stories. Two large interior chimneys project above the shallow hipped roof. The facade is five bays wide; the northeast elevation is two bays and the southwest elevation, incorporating the addition to the structure, is three. Twelve-over-twelve sash windows, with Doric window cornices, are used throughout. On the northwest front, the center entrance is ornamented with a simple architrave surround and covered by a porch supported by Roman-Doric columns and pilasters. The entablature and pediment contain dentil detail.

A small pane of glass, penetrating the clapboard covering, but not the wall, was placed to the right of the door enabling museum visitors to examine the construction techniques used in joining the two parts of the Suffolk Resolves House: on the left (looking at the facade from Canton Avenue) is the earlier portion, constructed about 1760; to the right is the addition to the structure made by Vose in 1773.

The Suffolk Resolves House has political significance as a surviving building associated with an historic pre-Revolutionary War event. The Suffolk Resolves was a statement expressing the Massachusetts Bay Colony's dissatisfaction with England's punitive colonial policies; the adoption of the Resolves by the Suffolk County conven- tion in 1774 was one of the first steps taken to organize opposition to these policies prior to the Revolution. The document was among the many local anti-British statements of the time: its distinction comes from its immediate endorsement by the First Continental Congress at Philadelphia.

The tax on tea of 1773; closing the port of Boston in 1774; a ban on holding town meetings without consent of the Royal Governor and other repressive acts by the British had made virtual slaves of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and the City of Boston. One form of resistance to this tyranny was the formation of county conven- tions which met throughout Massachusetts to formulate resolutions protesting the indifference and intransigence of King George III and Parliament in the years before the convening of the First Continental Congress at Philadelphia in 1774. Since town meetings were severely restricted, "county conventions" were substituted.

They were held, whenever possible, in rural locations to encourage the country people to make common cause with Boston and to remain, in the words of Samuel Adams, as "free from interference" as possible. By 1774 the political and economic situation had become intolerable, causing prominent Boston-area citizens, including many who were members of their local Committees of Correspondence, to meet with the Suffolk County convention in order to protest the coercive measures in use against Massachusetts. On April 16, 1774, the convention held a preliminary meeting at Doty's Tavern in Stoughton. They reconvened on September 6 at Woodward Tavern, Dedham. Dr.