The Smith-Gould House, 3 Summer St. (c. 1730)

The so-called Benjamin Kimball House at 3 Summer Street began as a single-room structure that was doubled in width, then doubled in height, and is one of dozens of houses standing in Ipswich that were moved from their original locations.

An unusual feature of this house is that it has gunstock corner posts on the first floor, which tells us that the house was once a single-floor cape. The boxed summer beams were never chamfered, indicating that the house was constructed after 1720. An examination of the framing indicates that the two sides of the original single-floor house were constructed at different times.

The frame of the house at 3 Summer Street was originally similar to the above sketch. The two halves of the original single-floor house were constructed at different times, and have “gunstock” posts in the corners. Image source: The Framed Houses of Massachusetts Bay by Abbott Lowell Cummings

On January 10, 1803, this small plot of land behind the ancient Dodge House on N. Main St. (no longer standing) was sold by Sarah Holmes to Benjamin Kimball Jr. who moved a house to this location. The deed of sale is accompanied by a second deed that tells us where this house was originally located. In March 1799 Jeremiah Day sold a three-acre plot of land on High Street to the town so it could increase the size of the Old Burying Ground to 4.7 acres. The deed stated that the property line ran through the middle of the Andrew Smith house ”with the southeasterly end of the house standing on the premise.” Andrew Smith died in 1797. The property had been in the family since it was deeded to George Smith in the 17th Century.

On January 12, 1803, Benjamin Kimball Jr. purchased the other half of the Smith house from his heirs and moved the house to the empty lot on Summer Street which he had purchased two days previously. Nine months later, in September 1803 Kimball sold the house to Elisha Gould. A dendrochronology study of the second floor indicates that the wood from which it was constructed was cut in 1807. Four years later, Elisha & Jane Gould sold the house in its present form to Daniel Lakeman.

In the mid-20th Century, this was the home of Harold Bowen, who wrote a series of folksy history articles for the local papers called “Tales of Olde Ipswich.” In Harold Bowen’s will, he deeded the house to the town of Ipswich, which sold it and created the Harold Bowen Fund for Historic Preservation from the proceeds of the sale.

Read the entire story of this house.