No. 5642 Bird Sawyer House, 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.
The Bird Sawyer House was located west of Upham’s Corner on Humphreys Street
Thomas Bird came to Dorchester in 1635 and erected this house shortly thereafter. By 1931 ten generations of his descendants had lived here. The house, which was located at 41 Humphreys Street, was known also as the Bird-Sawyer house.
Thomas Bird arrived from England on the second voyage of the ship Mary and John in 1635. He was a poor man but he did well enough to buy a large tract of land west of Dorchester Brook, between what are now Dudley and East Cottage Streets. Mrs. Mary Bird Hill, grandmother of Charles Winthrop Sawyer, the owner in the late 1920s, told Sawyer that she had seen Thomas Bird’s deed to the land dated 1637 with an Indian’s thumbprint on it. When Bird died, his estate was valued at 1000 pounds and included “ye olde dwelling house” and “ye new dwelling House.” Which of these was the house still standing in the early 20th century is not certain.
No. 1474 This illustration of the first appearance of the house from 1637 appears in the HABS/HAER Collection at the Library of Congress.
Additions were necessary to accommodate grandchildren, so the house grew with the family. The original house consisted of two rooms, a bedroom and kitchen and an attic. To this was later added a “lean-to” which was later incorporated into the house. The point of demarcation remained clear as one had to step down a few inches into the lean-to portion from the first floor of the original house. Later the roof was lifted to provide two rooms upstairs with a new attic above. Still later the attic roof was lifted to a higher peak and two more rooms were placed above those in the rear. Four rooms, two above and two below were built in 1804, replacing the second lean-to. The low ceiling, the wrought-iron latches and locks, and the uneven flooring created an atmosphere of early pioneering Puritanism. In the kitchen, the great brick fireplace was the center of attention.
No. 192 Bird Sawyer House
No. 1475 HABS/HAER illustration of the appearance of the house in 1667.
No. 1479 Photograph in the HABS/HAER Collection showing the house in the early 20th century.
No. 9707 This detail from the 1850 Eaton map shows the location of the Bird Sawyer House, owned at that time by G. Hill.
No. 11022 The arrow indicates the location of the Bird Sawyer House on this detail from the Pelham map of 1777. The lighter-colored rectangle near the bottom center represents the Old Dorchester North Burying Ground at the intersection of Columbia Road and Stoughton Street.