Edward A. Huebener Brick Collection no. 107 Wayside Inn
No. 5170 Wayside Inn, painting on brick.
Edward A. Huebener, a former Board member of the Dorchester Historical Society, was a collector of materials relating to Dorchester history including a very large collection of graphic materials, including prints and photographs, now owned by the Society. His very own contribution to this group of materials was the idea of taking a brick from a house that had been demolished and asking a local illustrator to paint a picture of the house upon the brick. The painted bricks may be viewed at the Dorchester Historical Society. While most of the collection is comprised of bricks from Dorchester Houses, a few were from houses in other towns.
This historic building was located in Sudbury.
Wayside Inn History
| “The scroll reads, “By the name of Howe.” And over this, no longer bright, Though glimmering with a latent light, Was hung the sword his grandsire bore In the rebellious days of yore, Down there at Concord in the fight. “ |
| From Tales of a Wayside Inn, by Longfellow |
Longfellow’s Wayside Inn was originally known as Howe’s Tavern from 1716 to 1861. The first innkeeper, David Howe, operated what was then called a “house of entertainment” along the old Boston Post Road in the same spot the Wayside Inn stands today. David and his wife Hebzibah’s first home appeared quite a bit different than the Wayside Inn’s rambling structure. It was typical by 18th century standards but small when compared to today’s homes; two total rooms, one over the other. He raised his first five children in this house, and it is believed that he doubled its size, adding two more rooms, by the time he received a license to operate an inn in 1716. The size of the Howe’s home and business would continue to grow as each subsequent innkeeper would leave his own mark on the Colonial landmark.
David Howe was a successful innkeeper — his father and grandfather were innkeepers in neighboring towns — and thrived by way of the busy coach traffic to and from the cities of Boston and Worcester. In 1746 he passed the family business to his son, Ezekiel, a Lt. Col. in the Revolutionary War who led the Sudbury Minute and Militia to Concord center on that fateful day of April 19, 1775.
Ezekiel was a prosperous innkeeper, acquiring a set of expensive export china for his daughter as a wedding gift in 1788 (a cup and saucer from this set is in the Inn’s permanent collection). Ezekiel passed the tavern business to his son, Adam, in 1796, who in turn handed it down to his son, Lyman, in 1830. Lyman died in 1861 having never married, and the Inn was inherited by relatives who ceased operating the Howe home as an overnight accommodation. Local folks rented the hall for dances, and itinerant farmers occupied smaller rooms for lengthy stays, but the Howe innkeeping business would not thrive again until a wool merchant from Malden, Massachusetts showed new interest in 1897.
Edward Rivers Lemon, an admirer of antiquities, purchased the Inn as “a retreat for literary pilgrims,”capitalizing on the interest generated by a widely read book of poems published in 1863 by Henry Longfellow called Tales of a Wayside Inn. Longfellow visited the Howe Tavern in 1862, and based his book on a group of fictitious characters that regularly gathered at the old Sudbury tavern. Lyman Howe was the character featured in “The Landlord’s Tale,” where Longfellow’s penned the immortal phrase “listen my children and you shall hear, of the midnight ride of Paul Revere.” Lemon renamed the old Howe Tavern Longfellow’s Wayside Inn and operated it with his wife, Cora, until his death in 1919.
In 1923, Cora Lemon sold the Inn to automobile manufacturer Henry Ford, who would eventually have the most visual impact on the Wayside Inn site. He moved the one-room Redstone School to the grounds in 1925; built the Grist Mill in 1929 and the Martha-Mary Chapel in 1940; and acquired some 3,000 acres around the Inn. He developed a trade school for boys which operated from 1928 to 1947, and many believe he intended to build the “village site”he eventually created in Dearborn, Michigan, right here in Sudbury. While he stopped short of that goal, he did create the non-profit status that the Inn operates under today. Henry Ford was the last private owner of the Wayside Inn
The Wayside Inn Archives
The Wayside Inn Archives contains over half a million documents relating to the Howe family and the development of what would eventually be called Longfellow’s Wayside Inn. Included among the papers are deeds, wills, photographs, news clippings, menus, innkeeping records, and other material generated by the Inn since its inception in 1716. While the oldest document in the collection dates to 1686, the Wayside Inn Archives also houses papers related to late 19th and early 20th century business while the Inn was owned and operated by wool merchant Edward Lemon and, later, auto-magnate Henry Ford. The Wayside Inn Archives is open by appointment only. All queries for access can be addressed via e-mail to:
Guy LeBlanc – History Department
history@wayside.org