Carpenter, Ezra, House

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.