Samuel Brooks House at Minute Man National Historical Park
The Samuel Brooks House is located in the Battle Road Unit of Minute Man National Historical Park. It is one of eleven houses within the park that existed when the Battles of Lexington and Concord took place on April 19, 1775. The National Park Service calls it a “witness house,” but other than being old and standing on the grounds of the battlefield, there is nothing special about it—no famous people lived here and no historic events took place inside. It is not open to the public, but you are welcome to stop and see it and walk on the property grounds.
The area where the Samuel Brooks House is located is known as Brooks Village. There are three other Brooks-family houses within a quarter mile. For those in a vehicle, park in the Brooks Village parking lot on Route 2A (North Great Road). The Samuel Brooks House is right next to the parking lot, while the others are as far as .2 mile down the road. The Job Brooks House is a tenth of a mile away and on the same side of the street. The Noah Brooks House and Tavern and the Joshua Brooks House are on the opposite side of the very busy North Great Road, and there is very little shoulder area to stand on.
If hiking or biking the Battle Road Trail, you will arrive at the back side of both the Samuel and Job Brooks houses. Samuel’s house can be reached via a path that connects the parking lot and the trail. Due to the possibility of picking up a tick, you’ll want to stay out of the tall grass as much as possible. Therefore, instead of traipsing through the grass to reach the Job Brooks house next door, I suggest taking the path out to North Great Road and then visiting all of the Brooks houses from there.
The Samuel Brooks House is thought to have been built around 1692 by Daniel Brooks, grandson of Thomas and Grace Brooks, the original Brooks Family members who settled in Concord in the 1650s. The construction date is not certain, but that was the year Daniel married Anna Meriam, and if you had money back then, it was traditional to build a new house for your family. However, the first time the house is mentioned is in his will from 1728. Thus, the house could have been built any time from 1692 to 1728.
The house was constructed in three stages, with Daniel building what ultimately is the eastern half. When he died in 1733, the house was inherited by his son Samuel, who doubled the structure’s size by building the west half around 1737. His son, Samuel Jr., inherited the property in 1758 and built the final addition sometime between 1760 and 1780: the ell on the east side (the current porch was added in the 1930s). It was Samuel Jr. who was living in the house on April 19, 1775, which is why the National Park Service now calls it the Samuel Brooks House.
While Samuel Jr. was a member of the Concord militia, it is not known if he fought on April 19th because Concord militia records no longer exist. He was later drafted into the Continental Army, but paid £10 in lieu of service—a common practice and one that was not shameful—so that he could remain home with his elderly mother. He was the only man in the household at the time. He later married Mary Flint in 1781, and she had seven children from a previous marriage.
The next owner was Samuel Jr.’s stepson, Nehemiah, who also happened to be the last owner with ties to the Brooks Family. He inherited the house in 1812 and spent the next twenty-four years there before selling in 1836 to Iassc Hurd. The house was sold two more times, with the last owner, George Paine, purchasing it in 1865. It was the Paine Family that sold the house to the National Park Service in 1966 for inclusion in Minute Man National Historical Park.
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Last updated on September 5, 2023
