Photographs from the nomination case file, National Park Service records.
Locke, Capt. Josiah, House
Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in
1979. 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
“Tlie pulpit for the first six months was occupied by different clergjmen. Bichard Metcalf, the present pastor, was called, and on June 14, ISGG, was duly installed.”
History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts (1880). Machine-read text.
one of 1100 National Register listings in Middlesex County · listed in 1979 · category: Building · one of 3 National Historic Landmarks in Middlesex County.
National Register reference number.79000356- 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.
HE town of Winchester is in the easterly section of Middlesex County, eight miles northwest of Boston by the Boston and Lowell Railroad, whicii here sends off branches to Woburn and Stoneham. Its form is triangular, and it is bounded on the north and northwest by Woburn, on the east by Stoneham and Medford, on the south by Medford and Arlington, and southwest by Lexington.
December 3, 1849, the committee reported favorably upon the plan, their report was accepted, and a committee chosen to draft a petition to the legislature. December 7, 1849, the committee reported the draft of a petition, which was accepted, and another committee chosen to obtain signers thereto. Samuel S. Richardson, Oliver R. Clark, and John A. Bolles were chosen a committee to take the necessary stejis to secure a town charter, and they employed Hon. Albert H. Nelson, of Woburn, as tiieir counsel. December 24, 1849, a committee, of which Hon. F. O. Prince was chairman, Avas chosen to select a name for the town and insert tlie same in the petition, which had received one hundred and seventy-six names. A great deal of difficulty was experienced in settling upon the name to be given to the new cliild, but finally it was decided to christen it Winchester, in lionor of Colonel William P. Winchester, a wellknown and public-spirited citizen of Boston, who thus became its godfather. The petition was presented to the legislature, January 19, 1850, and referred to the committee on towns. While it was pending in the committee, remonstrances were ])resented and referred to said committee from Luke Wyman and ciglity-nine others, of West Cambridge (now Arlington), and the selectmen and one hundred and three others, of Medford. At a townmeeting, held inWoburn, February 7, 1850, it was " Voted, That tlie town is willing that the prayer of tlie petition should be granted on just and equitable terms, to be agreed upon by a committee from each part of the town."
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 67 fires within 5 miles of Locke, Capt. Josiah, House between
1992 and 2020, burning about 102 acres in total. 1 started naturally. 28 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
Arson/incendiarism
28
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
15
Debris and open burning
10
Recreation and ceremony
10
Misuse of fire by a minor
2
Smoking
1
Natural
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 1,823 specimens
collected within 10 miles of Locke, Capt. Josiah, House between 1898 and
1975: 740 Animalia, 583 Plantae, 437 Fungi, 29 Protozoa, 17 Bacteria, 9 Unrecorded, 8 Chromista. 12 distinct Species records are shown.
Collected by ?, A B Seymour, A B. Proper 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
11 workings within 5 miles of Locke, Capt. Josiah, House: 7 past producers, 2 producers, 2 plants.
4 still produce. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction, Peat, Clay, Iron. 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
Winchester, the town this property stands in, in 5 storm reports between 1995 and 1999: 4 flash flood, 1 thunderstorm wind.
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.
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
2,989 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.
Description of the property
The Captain Josiah Locke House was built in 1803 on sparsely-settled farmland, but now stands in a neighborhood of small houses on half-acre lots, with only a small tract of land immediately to the north remaining undeveloped. A stone wall referred to in deeds subsequent to the Probate Court's division of Locke's estate remains on the houselot as does a 1931 garage which replaces Locke's barn. The brick end house itself is a good example of the Federal style. It is 5 bays wide, 2 stories high and has a central entrance. A flat portico supported by 2 columns projects from the entrance. Pilasters frame the door which is topped by a fanlight. Windows are double hung with 6/6 sash. The hipped roof has 4 tall end chimeys. Ells flank the house to the east and west.
The one on the west appears to have been original to the house although a 20th century fire has left only the main framing intact. The east ell, probably added between 1847 and 1850, is a separate structure built against the original house wall. Architectural investigation of the Captain Josiah Locke House shows substantial portions of the building's early fabric surviving intact. On the exterior, all of the clapboards on the front face and most of those on the rear elevation above window-will height show the scarfed joints characteristic of the Federal period. All sash in the rear of the house and one set in an end wall appear original; remaining sash throughout the main house and east ell show a characteristic mid-nineteenth-century profile.
Only in the west ell are there later sash, probably installed in 1941 as part of a post-fire recon- struction.
/ARCHITECT STATEMENT OF SIGNIFICANCE The Captain Josiah Locke House is one of a handful of structures which survive in Winchester from before the advent of the railroad in 1833, and one of the few anywhere to contain a complete room of Federal-period wallpaper still in situ. The entire building contains a high proportion of original fabric, modified by sensitively-executed later work, which together give a clear picture both of the house's original form and the effects of 175 years of continuous use and change. for its association with the Locke family, prominent early settlers, and has additional local significance from the building's association with a 20th century family of championship skaters.
According to tax records either Captain Josiah Locke (1779-1818) or his father, Josiah (1753-1811) of Woburn, built the house, including the west wing and a now demolished barn, in 1803. The Locke family were farmers and early settlers in Woburn, which is now the west part of Winchester. Captain Josiah, his father, and his brother Asa, whose slightly later house and outbuildings also survive, all had extensive holdings in the neighborhood. In addition to farming, Josiah Locke was active in town affairs; the Woburn Town Meeting appointed him both a Hog Reeve and a Surveyor of Highways. He was a member and the sixth captain-commander of the Woburn Militia Cavalry, a largely ceremonial body drawing members from Reading and Wilmington as well as Woburn.
Locke drowned in 1818, apparently while taking a break from haying to go swimming. He left a wife and eight daughters. The following year the Probate Court divided the house through the center of the hall, giving the east half to Locke's widow as part of her and the west to two daughters.
Quoted from the National Register nomination
for reference 79000356, 16 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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