Photographs from the nomination case file, National Park Service records.
Knight, Elisha, Homestead
Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in
1984. 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
“Bichard Brown, graduate of Harvard College in 1697, was ordained pastor of the church in Beading in 1712, and, Uke his predecessor, died ifter a pastorate of twenty yean. The churchy in Janoaiy, 1720-21^ had a membership of two hundred and thirty-six persons^ belonging in the teriitory now embraced in the towns of Melrose^ Stooebam, Wilmington, North Beading, Lynnfield^ Beading, and Wakefield.”
History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts (1880). Machine-read text.
one of 1100 National Register listings in Middlesex County · listed in 1984 · category: Building · one of 3 National Historic Landmarks in Middlesex County.
National Register reference number.84002863- 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.
Cotton Mather, in his Mritjii(iH<i, gives some remarkable instances of answers to his prayers. It was said of him, " He lives as near heaven as any man on earth." His successor was Rev. Jonathan Pierpont (H. U. 1685), who was ordained June 26, 1689. He was pastor till his death, in 1709. He was held in much esteem. A contemporary said, " He was a man of great worth." Judge Sewall speaks of his death as " a very great .loss." Tiie second meeting-house was built about 1689. Subscriptions were received towards its building from seventy-two persons in Reading, twenty-six in Lynn End, now Lynufield, and nine in Cliarlestown End, now Stoneham.
In the same year another French family, Francis Meers, or Mears, with his wife and nine children, were sent here from Boston, but soon after three of them were sent to Stoneham, one to Maiden ; the remainder, including the father, were left in Eeading. In 170;3 the town appropriated £2 to Francis Mears, " a Frenchman," provided he, with his family, move to Salem. He probably went away, but for ten years received assistance from Reading, mostly in wood, as appears from the records. There is no positive evidence of the fact, but it is suggested that the Mears families in this vicinity may be descendants of this Francis Meers.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 57 fires within 5 miles of Knight, Elisha, Homestead between
2003 and 2020, burning about 26 acres in total. None started naturally. 4 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
15
Recreation and ceremony
13
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
13
Arson/incendiarism
4
Misuse of fire by a minor
4
Equipment and vehicle use
3
Smoking
3
Power generation/transmission/distribution
2
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 954 specimens
collected within 10 miles of Knight, Elisha, Homestead between 1898 and
1975: 409 Animalia, 364 Plantae, 156 Fungi, 11 Bacteria, 7 Unrecorded, 4 Chromista, 3 Protozoa. 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
17 workings within 5 miles of Knight, Elisha, Homestead: 9 past producers, 5 producers, 2 plants, 1 unknown.
7 still produce. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction, Stone, Crushed/Broken, Iron, Titanium, Metal. 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
Stoneham, the town this property stands in, in 2 storm reports between 1995 and 2008: 1 thunderstorm wind, 1 flood.
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.
In Woburn, ten inches of water flowed across Main Street with water pouring out of the manhole covers. In Stoneham, heavy rain resulted in flooding on Maple Street where two cars were submerged; trapping their drivers.
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
2,180 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 reproduced in full on its own page, word for word and 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.
Quoted from the National Register nomination
for reference 84002863, 15 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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