Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1985. 19 historic topographic surveys show this location, the earliest from 1887.
From the record
“The Ezra Carpenter House is a historic house at 168 South Street in Foxborough, Massachusetts. The Cape style house was built in 1800 by Ezra Carpenter, a veteran of the American Revolutionary War.”
Wikipedia article Ezra Carpenter House, CC BY-SA 4.0.
One of 342 National Register listings published here for Norfolk County · listed in 1985 · category: Building.
National Register reference number.85000029- 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.
When Foxborough, as such, was created, all this territory belonged to the county of Suffolk; but it was all set off to the present county of Norfolk when incorporated, March 26, 1793. John Shepard was born Feb. 25,1705, and died April 3, 1809, aged one He was born in what was then Dorchester, now Foxborough; and a most respectable antiquarian has recently once more given currency to the story that he had been (through legislative changes) a resident
As we have seen, Foxborough was carved in 1778 from Wrentham, Walpole, Stoughtonham, and Stoughton; principally from the two latter towns. It is natural, therefore, to inquire what the conduct of these two towns had been during the Revolutionary struggle.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 107 fires within 5 miles of Ezra Carpenter House
between 2015 and 2020, burning about 53 acres in total. 1 started naturally. 1 was 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
Recreation and ceremony
40
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
38
Smoking
15
Debris and open burning
8
Equipment and vehicle use
4
Natural
1
Arson/incendiarism
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 1,889 specimens
collected within 10 miles of Ezra Carpenter House between 1870 and 1975: 857 Fungi, 608 Plantae, 290 Animalia, 100 Protozoa, 16 Chromista, 13 Unrecorded, 5 Bacteria.
12 distinct Species records are shown.
Collected by ?, A. A. Eaton, A. B. Seymour 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
15 workings within 5 miles of Ezra Carpenter House: 9 past producers, 5 producers, 1 unknown.
5 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
Foxborough, the town this property stands in, in 15 storm reports between 1998 and 2020: 8 thunderstorm wind, 5 hail, 1 heavy rain, 1 lightning.
The reports record 1 injury. 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.
Lightning struck a house at the intersection of Mechanic and Hope Streets. It struck a tree which imploded sending pieces of wood onto the deck. The lightning then traveled through the yard, creating a 25 foot trench leading to a house and destroying the wooden stairs on the deck and blowing gutters off the house. A 74 year old woman who lives in the house was taken to the hospital with chest pains.
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
The Ezra Carpenter House is set back one hundred feet from South Street on a level lot of almost one acre. In front of the house are a broad lawn, two lilac bushes, and a large maple tree; the area behind the house is open except for a few old apple trees. Located in a residential area of single-family 19th and 20th century dvellings, the Ezca Carpenter House was built around 1800 along South Street, one of Foxborough's earliest roads. It consists of a 12 story main structure with an attached southern wing. In the rear is a small single-story addition, built ca. 1920. The house is a typical Federal-period cottage. The main house is five bays wide with a center entry. The roof is a shallow-pitched gable, and there is a small central chimney located forward of the ridge.
The five-bay southern wing is original to the main house up to the second bay. It was extended around 1830 to include three additional bays (two doors and a window). The house stands on its original cut-granite foundation. Its front doorway is em- bellished with flat pilasters with simple Doric capitals. The exterior clapboards are in part original, but the roof is now covered with asbestos shingles laid in a diamond hung sashelindov'frames are original but sashes have been replaced with 8/12 double- On the western side of the building, its main facade, four 8/12 simply framed windows flank the door and are flush with a plain frieze board spanning the front of the house. Plain wide corer boards frame the facade, which is capped by a comice of crown molding of late 19th century date.
The western side of the wing, with three windows and two simply framed doorways, is framed by plain comer boards and comnice.
(in one paragraph) Builder Architect Unknown Ihe Ezra Carpenter House possesses integrity of location, design, setting, materials, workmanship, feeling, and association. It is significant as an intact Federal-perioc cottage and as the home of the patriarch of one of Foxborouch''s most prominent families, important center of straw hat manutacture. level for listing on the National Register of Historic Places. The house was built for Ezca Carpenter (1753-1841) around 1800. The son of Nehemiah Carpenter, one of Foxborough's founders, Ezca was a hero of the Revolutionary War. He answered the sumons for minute men after the battle of lexington, served at Valley Forge, and crossed the Delaware River with General Washington on Christmas night, 1776.
Atter the war, Ezxa retumed to Foxborough, which was then primarily a poor agricultura. conmnity. He became a farmer and a straw merchant, travelling to Boston to trade braided straw. He is thought to have been the first straw merchant in a town that by the mid 19th century would become a major regional center for the straw hat and bonnet industry. The Ezra Carpenter House is architectucally important as one of the only intact Federal- period cottages remaining in Foxborough.. Other early cottages in Foxborough have had numerous additions, including front porches, that substantially alter their original appearnent hastbecored in thousse cetaiot the aten, tyd the propetty retains its nural. character, looking today much as it did when the first Carpenters lived there.
Ezra Carpenter's children and grandchildren were leaders in Foxborough's civic and conmercial affairs throughout the 19th century. up in the house and inherited his father's small business. He expanded the straw iis lacherentunai bustnes. His son, Daniels (1795-1889), grew enterprise to include bonnet manufacturing as a cottage industry.
Quoted from the National Register nomination
for reference 85000029, 13 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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