National Register reference number.87000375- 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.
King Philip's War. - The history of Westminster, which properly includes the causes that led to its original settlement, began in the year 1675, at the opening of that tragic episode in early New England life known as the Narragansett or King Philip's War. More than half a century had passed away since the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers, and more than forty years since the founding of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, and peace and good-will had prevailed for the most part between the new-comers to these shores and their aborigin.al occupants. This state of tranquillity and kindly intercourse had been secured and perpetuated largely through the influence of Massasoit, the benignant, just, magnanimous chief of the Wampanoags, an important Indian tribe occupying the territory lying along the eastern borders of Narragansett Bay.
The subject seems to have received no further attention from any one for more than forty years or until a large percentage of those actually engaged in the Narragansett service had gone to their graves, when, in the month of June, 1727, Samuel Chandler and Jacob Wright, " in behalf of themselves and of many others who were personally present at the fort and fight at Narragansett, or descendants of those who were there or in strictest alliance with them," petitioned the General Court for lands substantially as before, " under such restrictions and limitations as the Court shall judge fit." The petition was favorably received and action was taken looking to the granting of the prayer of the petitioners and also to the ascertaining of the names of all persons having claims under the pledge of the government designated. The matter did not come to a definite conclusion, however, until the 15th of .June in the following year, when a committee was chosen to survey and lay out two tracts of land of the contents of six miles square in some of the unappropriated territory of the province for the officers and soldiers who served their country in the Narragansett War, to whom said tracts were to be granted and assigned on condition that the grantees shall " settle sixty families at least in each township, with a learned Orthodoxminister, within the space of seven years from the date of the grant.'' On the 18th of the next December this committee reported " the plan of a town of the contents of six miles square exclusive of the pond near Rutland and Lunenburg." This was the original plan of what was afterward the town of Westminster, and is still preserved in the Archives of the State of Massachu- setts. On the same day a plan of a second township of the same size was reported situated on Souhegan Kiver, which subsequently became Amherst, N. H. Time went on, but no steps were taken in regard to the settlement of these grants. Indeed, the grantees of them were not definitely determined for several years after they weremade. The number of claimants for lands under the pledge given to the Narragansett soldiers increased slowly until it reached the aggregate of eight hundred and forty, whereupon it was maintained that the grants made were much too small to give each person a sufficient amount to satisfy him and answer the demands of justice and honor in the case. Consequently the whole body of claimants, who had duly organized and were holding meetings from time to time in Boston and vicinity for the purpose of conserving their interests in the matter, through a committee chosen for the purpose, asked the coui-t for further appropriations. After a long delay it was finally decided to grant a township of the contents of six miles square to every one hundred and twenty soldiers who had proved their claims satisfactorily to the court, and a grant of five additional towns - making seven in all - was ordered and duly approved by the Governor April 26, 1733. It was not, however, till February 26, 1734, that the last of the plans of these five townships was submitted by the committee chosen to survey and lay them out and finally approved by the General Court and confirmed to the grantees.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 64 fires within 5 miles of Nathan Wood House
between 2015 and 2020, burning about 80 acres in total. None started naturally. 2 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
37
Missing data/not specified/undetermined
16
Smoking
3
Equipment and vehicle use
2
Recreation and ceremony
2
Arson/incendiarism
2
Power generation/transmission/distribution
1
Misuse of fire by a minor
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 632 specimens
collected within 10 miles of Nathan Wood House between 1870 and 1973: 283 Plantae, 171 Fungi, 161 Animalia, 8 Unrecorded, 6 Chromista, 3 Protozoa.
12 distinct Species records are shown.
Collected by A. B. Seymour, A. Ferrett, A. H. Allen 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
1 working within 5 miles of Nathan Wood House: 1 past producer.
None of them still produces. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction. 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
Westminster, the town this property stands in, in 10 storm reports between 2005 and 2018: 3 thunderstorm wind, 3 hail, 2 flash flood, 1 lightning.
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 Westminster and Athol and Leicester, several basements were flooded. The Blackstone River overflowed its banks in Uxbridge spilling on to Blackstone and Lower Mendon Streets and flooding basements on Blackstone Street. In Worcester, there were flooded basements on Milbury, Hooper, and Brookline Streets. In addition, Beaver Brook overflowed flooding a parking lot.
At 9:16 AM EST, moderate flooding was reported under several railroad underpasses southwest of Fitchburg. This included Princeton Road and State Route 2A.
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 Nathan Wood House, Westminster, is located in a rural setting on à four-acre lot on the corner of Worcester Road and Patricia Road, about a mile southeast of the town center. The house is a vernacular Georgian-style residence whose well-preserved exterior appears little changed since the building was constructed ca. 1756. The timber-frame house with graduated clapboard exterior rises 2 1/2 stories from a fieldstone foundation. It is five bays wide, with a central pedimented entrance. The central chimney 15 located forward of the gable roof's ridge. The roof is presently asphalt-covered. A single-story rear ell, shingle-sheathed, was added in the late 19th century. The house is set back about twenty feet from the road, behind a Tow, dry-laid fieldstone wall covered with rosebushes.
A barn, built ca. 1820, stands to the north of the house. Several large maple trees, beauty bushes, and old lilacs surround the house. To the south and east is a sloping lawn with an extensive perennial border; beyond this is an open field containing several beehives. The remaining three acres are wooded. The Ahijah Wood House, located south of the Nathan Wood House and also being nominated to the National Register is not visible. The main (west) facade is well proportioned, and distinguished by its central The doorway is topped by a five-light transom and set within a classical frame of incised pilasters supporting entablature and deeply molded, dentilated pediment.
Symmetrically aligned fenestration consisting of 8/12 Kaned fonestrat ton constes ting of molted, sash with plain sills is elaborated on the first story with molded cap cornices. Windows on the second story are set flush with the building's simple cornice. Most of the sash retains original lights. Narrow corner boards finish the otherwise unadorned facade.
(in one paragraph) Builder/Architect Unknown The Nathan Wood House, Westminster, retains integrity of location, design, setting, materlals, workmanship, feeling, and vernacular mid-Georgian style building retaining original finishes on both exterior and interior, the house holds associations with a local family of some significance and remains in their possession for almost a century and half. The Nathan Wood House thus fulfils Criteria B and C of the National Register of Historic Places on the local level. The town of Westminster was one of seven townships designated in 1733 as part of a land grant made in 1728 by the General Court: this grant fulfilled a commitment made in 1685 to veterans of King Philip's War and their survivors.
Located just north of Wachusett Mountain in north-central Massachusetts, the township, then known as Narraganett, No. 2, received its first European in 1737. A meetinghouse site was established in 1739. Settlement proceeded slowly despite the inducements of $40 bounty and construction of a gristmill (1741) to Ture families. By 1741, nineteen families had settled in the town. With hostilities resulting from the French and Indian War, settlement was slow in the 1740s (ten houses are known to have been fortified due to frontier warfare); and by 1750, only thirty-two families had erected houses and cleared their mandated three acres on lots of sixty acres each.
It was not until after 1750, when the Legislature ordered meeting of proprietors to be held in the township and decisions were rendered allowing public improvements (especially highways) that new residents were retained. A poor agrarian community, Narragansett No. 2 was incorporated as Westminster in 1759. In April 1770, the town was granted representation in the Legislature. A committee authorized to subdivide the township began to lay out lots early in 1734.
Quoted from the National Register nomination
for reference 87000375, 23 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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