Photographs from the nomination case file, National Park Service records.
Allen, Abel, House
Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in
1978. A historic map-sheet match is not published yet. The record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
From the record
“At the famous Lovewell's Fight with the Pigwacket tribe of Indians, which took place at Pigwacket (Fryeburg), May 8, 1725, Jacob Fulham, who was a sergeant in Captain Lovewell's company, was killed. He lived to an advanced age, and as "Colonel Francis Fulhnm " was moderator of a town-meeting, Marcli £5, 1751.”
History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts (1880). Machine-read text.
one of 1100 National Register listings in Middlesex County · listed in 1978 · category: Building · one of 3 National Historic Landmarks in Middlesex County.
National Register reference number.78000465- the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.
The territory of the original town of Watertown was so extensive that its several parts were very early known by distinct and peculiar names. The lands next west of Beaver Brook were called " the lots in the Further Plain," or the Great Plain (and later Waltham Plain). The Remote or West Pine Meadows were probably in the southern or southeastern parts of Weston. The Lieu of Township Lots, or lots beyond the Further Plain, were west of Waltham Plain, south of the Great Dividends, and extended beyond Stony Brook. The Farms, or Farm Lands, included what remained as far as the Sudbury and Dedham bounds, comprising the main portion of Weston.
In the files of the County Court, is a schedule dated May 10, 1642, containing a list of names of persons to whom ninety-two farms, containing 7,674 acres, were allotted, and mention is made of " farms laid out formerly." The names of the committee do not appear on this schedule, but they do appear, with some half-dozen others, in connection with a range of lots on the south side of the highway. " The first lot in the range, adjoining the Sudbury Line, was that of Bryan Pendleton, by him sold to Peter Noyes, and very early purcJiased by George Munning." Adjoining this on the east were tlie lots of Daniel Pattrick, Simon Eire, Jolm Stowers, Abraham Browne, Jolm Whitney, Edward How, Jeremiah A'orcross, and Thomas Mayhew, who thus appear to have been the earliest proprietors of lands in Weston. The allotment committee seem to have provided farms for themselves and a few friends in advance of the general allotment of May, 1643.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 92 fires within 5 miles of Allen, Abel, House between
1995 and 2020, burning about 62 acres in total. 1 started naturally. 7 were recorded as arson.
Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted
here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.
Reported cause
Fires
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
32
Debris and open burning
22
Recreation and ceremony
17
Arson/incendiarism
7
Power generation/transmission/distribution
5
Railroad operations and maintenance
3
Other causes
2
Smoking
2
Natural
1
Equipment and vehicle use
1
The most recent of
them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service
that recorded it.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. Museums hold 2,139 specimens
collected within 10 miles of Allen, Abel, House between 1898 and
1975: 1,247 Animalia, 472 Plantae, 375 Fungi, 23 Protozoa, 10 Bacteria, 10 Chromista, 2 Unrecorded. 12 distinct Species records are shown.
Collected by ?, A. B. Seymour, A. B. Seymour & M. D. Feigley and others. Each is a
physical object with a catalogue
number, and each entry opens the museum's record. This is what was
collected and kept, not a survey of what lives here - nothing can be
concluded from a species being absent.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists
12 workings within 5 miles of Allen, Abel, House: 10 past producers, 2 producers.
2 still produce. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction, Stone, Crushed/Broken. Distance is straight-line from the
map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring
settlement's page as well.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The National Weather Service names
Weston, the town this property stands in, in 14 storm reports between 1994 and 2025: 9 thunderstorm wind, 2 hail, 1 flash flood, 1 lightning.
No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office
filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date
opens the federal record of that event.
A microburst with winds estimated near 65 mph caused damage in Weston (as well as Waltham and Wellesley). In Weston, multiple large trees and wires were down on Meadowbrook Road. Three large 2-foot oak trees were downed on Summer Street. Large branches were down on North Avenue, Pine Street, and South Street. A big tree was down on Rolling Lane. A 10-inch diameter tree was down on Doublet Hill Road. Two power poles were broken and Eversource, the utility company, was there all night.
A microburst with winds of approximately 65 mph caused damage in Waltham (as well as Weston and Wellesley). In Waltham, three trees were downed and leaning on a house on Florence Road, causing minor damage. A large tree was down on Lincoln Street. Tree branches were down on a house and deck on Keach Terrace. A tree fell onto a vehicle on Vernon Street. Numerous trees were down in the vicinity of Brandeis University.
In Waltham, a car was stuck in flooding on Second Avenue...no water inside the vehicle. At 440 PM EST (540 PM EDT), a portion of Route 128 Southbound at Route 20 was flooded and impassable. Six to twelve inches of water was observed on South Street at Charlesbank Way.
An early morning thunderstorm with unusually frequent cloud to ground lightning moved eastward across the western suburbs of Boston and then directly across the city. In Weston and Newton, several trees and power lines were knocked down by strong winds. Lightning strikes blew out transformers and knocked out power to an estimated 20,000 customers from Sudbury to Boston. Small hail was reported by the National Weather Service at Logan International Airport in Boston. The Boston Fire Department reported its busiest two hours on record as lightning strikes cut off power, triggered alarm systems and heavy rain flooded roads. Lightning detection systems recorded around 20 cloud to ground strikes per minute or around 1,200 strikes per hour, continuing for more than an hour.
No historic map-sheet match is published
for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs
a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
Browse the county's mapped places while that work is
pending.
From the nomination file
2,878 words on record
When this property was proposed for the
National Register, someone wrote the case for it: what the building is,
and why it matters. That document is a federal record in the public domain.
It is quoted below word for word, never summarised. The text was read off the scanned case file by machine, so the
occasional stray character is the recogniser's and the 1970s
typewriter's.
Statement of significance
BUILDER/ÁRCHITECT Thomas Rand, Builder, 1760 The Abel Allen House is significant as reputedly being the oldest house in Weston and for its importance in the history of the community. The property was one of the 92 original farms laid out in the "Farmlands" of Watertown (later Weston) in 1642. Lot number 68 of 78 acres was granted to Miles Ives, who in 1684 willed it to his grandson, Abel Allen. The 1696 date of the original house is based on tradi- tion and on the internal evidence gathered during renovation. The house has exceptional architectural significance because the process of its structural history is revealed. The structure grew from a primitive 17th century house into the unusual saltbox that it is today.
It is of further architectural interest due to the 1760 construction which includes the unique three small rooms and stair which were probably designed and executed by the builder/owner Thomas Rand. The original owner of the house, Abel Allen, was one of the nineteen men who gathered in 1710 to sign the covenant and to officially organize the first church in the town that, in 1713, became incorporated as the Town of Weston. Abel Allen's son, David, owned the Allen farms in 1756: the farm "where I now live" of 60 acres and "my homestead" of 70 acres. He was a member of the Train Band in 1757. In 1758, "owning his own gun" , he served in the invasion of Canada under General Jeffrey Amherst. In 1759 he was killed while serving under Capt. Israel Davis in the second attack on Louisbourg. Col.
Elisha Jones, a Tory and the neighbor of the Allens on the west, bought the two Allen farms totaling 134 acres in 1757 and 1758.
Quoted from the National Register nomination
for reference 78000465, 14 pages, held by the National Archives in Record
Group 79. See the
catalogue record.
Listed places nearby
6 within 8 miles
Other National Register properties close
enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both
positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties
to their map sheets.
Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Specimens. Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), https://www.gbif.org/. Only records licensed CC0 or CC BY are used. Records licensed CC BY-NC are excluded because this site carries advertising. Images are checked individually and any whose licence is non-commercial, no-derivatives or unreadable is refused.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.
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