National Register reference number.80001678- 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.
Then and now
1887 to 1997
The ground this property stands on, surveyed
110 years apart. Drag the handle to wipe between them. Both sheets are
United States Geological Survey originals; neither has been altered.
18871997
What happened here
An account from the chapter on Lancaster town. The inset identifies its exact
source book and publication year.
of war, generally proved faithful to the English, and their services as scouts were invaluable. Among these none deserves better to be honored in Lancaster story than James Wiser, alias Quanapaug or Quanapohit, whose courage and fidelity would have saved the town from the massacre of 1676, had not his timely warning been unwisely discredited by the apparently lethargic Governor and his slumberous Council.
At how early a date the pioneer pale-face first looked down from its southern barrier of hills upon Sholan's beautiful domain is not known. John Winthrop relates that the Watertown people began a settlement at Nashaway in 1643. Before that Thomas King had accepted the invitation of the sachem, and selected a location for a trading post on the sunny slope of George Hill, near the parting of two trails which led from the " wading-place" of Nashaway, westward to Wachusett, and southwesterly by Washacum to the land of the Quabaugs. King was a young man. of limited means, and had formed a partnership with Henry Symonds, a freeman, a capitalist, and an enterprising contractor, living near the head of what is now North Street, in Boston. By a little brook that came brawling down the divide over which the western trail ran, the trucking-house was built, probably in 1642, certainly before the summer of 1643. Symonds, the moneyed partner, died in September of 1643, and King survived him little more than a year. In the inventory of King's property there is no hint of any estate at Lancaster. This is confirmation of the statement made by Rev. Timothy Harrington in 1753 - doubtless recording a tradition - that a company bought such proprietary rights at Nashaway as King had obtained by his bargain with Sholan. No deed of a sale is foun<l, but the price of the grant, as agreed upon with the Indians, was twelve pounds. The territory acquired was nominally ten miles long from south to north, by eight miles wide. It included a few families of Indians, dwelling about the rivers and ponds, though these, perhaps, joined the Washacum village, when, in 1663 and 1669, the warriors of the tribe were decimated in contest with the bloodthirsty Mohawks. A provision in Sholan's deed, however, restricted the purchasers and their successors from "molesting the Indians in their hunting, fishing, or usual planting places." Joint occupancy was the evident intent of the conveyance. *
Branch. Prescott, who had chosen his first home-lot in the eastern range, covering the site of the present Lancaster House, sold it to Ralph Houghton and made his home at the trucking-house. Philip Knight, of Charlestown, built a house on the lot which he bought of Steven Day, adjoining Prescott's on the north, and upon the next two lots were John and Solomon Johnson, of Sudbury, a roadway separating their dwellings. Upon the south corner of Solomon Johnson's lot now stands the George Hill Schoolhouse. Thomas Sav/yer, a blacksmith of Rowley, married Mary, the daughter of Prescott, in 1647 or 1648, and set up a home near his father-in-law, in a range of lots parallel to and south of those above named. Mrs. Sally Case's residence is nearly upon the site of the Sawyer house. These were probably the first five dwellings south of the North River. William Kerley perhaps moved upon his house-lot in the upper range not much later, and Daniel Hudson, a brickmaker from Watertown, occupied John Moore's lot certainly as early as the spring of 1651.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 103 fires within 5 miles of Founder's Hall
between 2002 and 2020, burning about 2,729 acres in total. None started naturally. 5 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
Debris and open burning
47
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
25
Recreation and ceremony
14
Arson/incendiarism
5
Smoking
5
Equipment and vehicle use
4
Misuse of fire by a minor
3
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 1,940 specimens
collected within 10 miles of Founder's Hall between 1859 and 1974: 1,134 Animalia, 499 Plantae, 294 Fungi, 6 Unrecorded, 5 Chromista, 2 Protozoa.
12 distinct Species records are shown.
Collected by A. C. Gibson, A. Ferrett, A. G. Chandler 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
13 workings within 5 miles of Founder's Hall: 8 past producers, 4 producers, 1 prospect.
4 still produce. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction, Peat, Iron, Zinc. 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
Lancaster, the town this property stands in, in 8 storm reports between 2005 and 2026: 6 thunderstorm wind, 1 hail, 1 funnel cloud.
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.
1 paper published in this town,
digitised by the Library of Congress and free to read. Every page is searchable, so a name or a street can be
looked for directly in what the town printed about itself at the time.
United States Geological Survey topographic
sheets whose coverage includes this point. Matched by taking the coordinate the National Park Service records for this property, then
testing that coordinate against the published boundary of every sheet.
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
Founder's Hall is located at the center of the campus of Atlantic Union College, approximately 200' north of Flagg Street and 400' west of South Main Street in South Lancaster. Land surrounding the building is laid out in lawns, paths and planting beds. Founder's Hall is a two-and-one-half story structure of balloon-frame construction with decorative elements drawn from both the Victorian Gothic and Queen Anne styles. The structure has a basically rectangular plan with a projecting central pavilion on both its east and west elevations. The building rests on a high brick foundation and is enclosed by a steeply pitched hip roof with gables over both pavilions; all roofs terminate in open eaves with exposed rafters.
The exterior is covered with clapboards, some vertical tongue-and-groove boarding and decorative shingling (in the gables only). The facade (west elevation) is symmetrical; at its center is a one-bay deep pavilion. Set in front of the pavilion is an open porch. This porch sits on a base which is enclosed by lattice-work; rising from the base are chamfered posts which support a shed roof and a decorative gable at the porch's center. Decorative trim of the porch consists of a shingled railing surmounted by squat turned balusters, pierced brackets, an apron beneath the cornice and decorative panelling on the end gables ofthe shed roof (north and south).
At the first story the pavilion contains an entry with panelled doors and a five-pane transom, flanked on each side by one 4/4 window; these windows are set in unmoulded frames and have caps decorated by shallow brackets and a bank of saw-tooth trim. All windows of the building's first two stories have this decorative trim.and are made up of units containing 4/4 sash.
/Architect Barker & Nourse, Architects (Worcester, MA) Statement of Significance (in one paragraph) Founder's Hall retains the integrity of its original design, setting, materials, workmanship, location and historical associations with the development of the private educational system of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, a system which has a current enrollment of 535,000 students. The building was constructed in the winter of 1883- 1884 under the direction of Elder Stephen N. Haskett, a founder of the Adventist Church, from plans prepared by the Worcester architectural firm of Barker and Nourse in 1883. It is now the oldest extant educational building in the Adventist system. Haskell financed the project by floating a stock issue of $75,000 among the 15,000 Adventists of the time.
Wood for the building's construction was cut in a local woodlot and much of the construction labor was donated without charge. Upon completion, Founder's Hall housed the South Lancaster Academy. Later, the building was used as the administration building of Lancaster Juniox, College and of its successor, the Atlantic union college. Subsequently, the building was in use as the College's Music Conservatory until 1975-1976 when it was restored and converted to the school's Religion center. Included in this last change of use was the opening of a museum room containing Adventist memorabilia and historical documents.
Also included in the building is the Miller Chapel, restored in 1975-1976, in which are exhibited oil portraits of William and Lucy Paulina Miller, leaders of the Millerite Movement of the 1830's and 1840's out of which Adventism grew, as painted by American primitive painter Horace Bundy. In addition, the chapel contains a rare 1843 Millerite Chart, the oak pulpit and rostrum furniture from Miller's church. Soon to be installed is a tracker organ make by John Steer.
Quoted from the National Register nomination
for reference 80001678, 11 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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