Cogswell's Grant (1728)

Cogswell referred to this property in documents as “Westberry Lee,” naming it after his birthplace in England, and a mortgage record for 1641 indicates a house and other buildings on the property. The seventeenth-century buildings do not survive, but archaeological evidence has revealed that a structure from that period had lain perpendicular to the existing 1728 house. In 1651 John Cogswell began to divide his property among his sons, deeding sixty acres each to William and John Jr. John Jr. immediately sold his acreage to William, and by 1657, John Sr. had sold the remaining 180 acres to William as well.

William Cogswell (1619-1700) was a successful farmer, and also served as a selectman and parish meeting moderator in Chebacco Parish. Records from this period show his farm included a malt house, a sawmill or grist mill, orchards, and crops of barley, hay, and salt marsh hay. In 1656 William was granted compensation by the Town of Ipswich for a highway that crossed the property, leading from Ipswich to Gloucester. He was also given permission to operate a ferry across the Chebacco (now Essex) River as part of the highway, charging two pence a person; the ferry was replaced by a horse bridge in 1666. On William’s death, he left his property to his four sons in fifty- to one hundred-acre parcels.

Captain Jonathan Cogswell (1661-1717) inherited eighty acres from his father in 1700, including the present house site, and as his brothers predeceased him, his land increased. By the end of his life seventeen years later, the farm had attained its present 165-acre configuration, which has remained intact to this day. Captain Cogswell was a merchant, Justice of the Peace, and a member of the militia. There is little documentation of his time on the farm, but the contents of his widow Elizabeth Wainwright’s will in 1723 indicate a high degree of prosperity.

Jonathan Cogswell Jr. (1687-1752) inherited the 165-acre property in 1717 at age thirty, and his time at Westberry Lee is the most significant in terms of buildings that survive today. Two years after inheriting the property, Jonathan built a salt hay barn, the oldest building currently standing at Cogswell’s Grant. In 1728 he built the western portion of the current house, possibly as an addition to the existing seventeenth-century house that was oriented north to south. The terraces in front of the house may also date to his tenure, as they are typical of country house landscaping in this period.

By 1749 Jonathan Cogswell Jr. was so prosperous that he had the second-highest taxable wealth in all of Ipswich. Sometime before 1752, the seventeenth-century portion of the house was taken down, and a new addition, the eastern portion of the current house, was constructed. It appears that this portion of the house was not entirely finished, however, before Jonathan Jr. died in 1752. The farm was leased to tenant farmers until 1761, when Jonathan Jr.’s son was old enough to take possession.

Colonel Jonathan Cogswell (1740-1819) lived at Westberry Lee and worked the farm for thirty years, starting at age twenty-one, when he came into his majority. He was Captain of an Ipswich alarm list company raised in 1774, promoted to Major in 1775, and was Colonel of the Second Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers in the army from 1776 until the end of the Revolutionary War. A Justice of the Peace, a member of the State Constitutional Convention in 1780, and part of the Massachusetts delegation to the United States Constitutional Convention in 1788, Colonel Cogswell was a prominent figure in the community. However, in 1791, Colonel Cogswell decided to move closer to Chebacco center, and upon the untimely death of his only son in 1813, Westberry Lee was once again leased to tenants. This was the last time that the Cogswell family resided at the farm, and though Colonel Cogswell’s widow refused to sell the property during her lifetime, it finally passed out of the family in 1839, two hundred years after John Cogswell’s original grant.

In 1937 Essex antiquarian Mrs. Mardie Pollys wrote to Nina Fletcher Little describing her memories of childhood visits to the Boyd farm. “Adam Boyd and his sons brought the farm to a high degree of cultivation. Large flocks of peacocks were raised at one time, the meat selling in Boston markets for $1.00 a pound. Many new vegetables of that day were cultivated and in the lovely terraced gardens of the Misses Boyd, rare and beautiful shrubs were to be found. The apple orchards of Mr. Boyd at one time were probably the finest in the country.”

The last of the Boyd family to own the farm was Frank A. Boyd, who held all rights to the property by 1909. Oral history interviews with his children revealed a substantial farming operation that involved a milk route to Gloucester, and employed five or six hired men in season. Unfortunately, through some bad investments in oil stocks in 1920, Frank Boyd fell into a pattern of multiple mortgages on the property. He also sold some of the original architectural features out of the house to a salvage dealer in his last few years of ownership, as the Colonial Revival had become a very popular style, with eighteenth-century architecture and artifacts in great demand. Ultimately, through foreclosure, Boyd was forced to sell the farm at auction in 1925.

Cogswell’s Grant was ideally suited for the Little family. Not only was it conveniently located in Essex, but the surrounding 165 acres gave them a sense of being pleasantly isolated on the farm. They were excited by the prospect of restoring the eighteenth-century farmhouse, which had been modified very little over the years, with limited electricity and no running water. They quickly set about investigating its eighteenth-century features, carefully documenting all their findings and work, while modernizing some elements to make it a comfortable summer home for their family.

They worked with Eugene Dow as a general contractor, who was very knowledgeable about old houses. He was also the brother of George Francis Dow, a respected antiquarian who had overseen the restoration of the Parson Capen House in Topsfield, Massachusetts. Dow consulted closely with the Littles on every detail of the restoration, even seeking out period doors and a corner cupboard to replace the originals sold out of the house by Frank Boyd. They installed plumbing and electricity, and were especially thrilled to uncover the original kitchen fireplace with two beehive ovens. They also expanded the rear ell of the house, to enlarge the service wing for the caretakers they knew such a property would require.

Studying and restoring the interior finishes of the house was an important part of the restoration process. The woodwork and trim had all been painted white in the late nineteenth century, and there were Victorian-era wallpapers throughout the house. Mrs. Little was especially fond of overmantel paintings of this period, and when she saw the paneled walls above the fireplaces she hoped they might find some landscape paintings under the white paint. The Littles asked Esther Stevens Brazer, a decorative paint specialist from New York, to investigate the layers of paint, and she discovered a series of paint schemes including grain painting and marbling in different shades of green, brown, and red. In 1939 she returned to the house to spend two weeks recreating the original paint schemes as closely as possible, leaving samples of the original paint exposed for reference.

As the years went by, Cogswell’s Grant became a special retreat for the Littles and their three children, Jack, Warren (known as Renny), and Selina. Their life at the farm was documented with a series of scrapbooks containing photos and notes of farm activities and gatherings, favorite animals, special events, and antique cars collected by Jack. It was also a center of study and research, as the Littles had a wide circle of friends, fellow collectors, dealers, and scholars with whom they enthusiastically shared their collections and exchanged information. They hosted gatherings of collectors’ clubs, such as the Rushlight Club (for collectors of early American lighting fixtures), the China Students Club, and the Walpole Society, and the visitors’ books over the years show many prominent names from the world of decorative arts.

Cogswell’s Grant was more than just a summer house for the Little family. Though the property was a beautiful historic setting for their always-growing collections, it was also a working family farm, maintained by live-in, year-round caretakers who operated the farm and produced food for the Littles’ consumption. Cows, sheep, pigs, and chickens were raised, and milk and eggs were sold from the farm into the 1970s. Vegetables and fruits from a large garden behind the house were preserved and produced enough to provide the Little family with farm produce all year long. The caretakers made deliveries of preserves, frozen meats, and fresh eggs throughout the winter to the Brookline home, and the Littles took great pride in telling guests at their table that everything on it had been raised on their farm.