Stow-Hardy House (photo by National Park Service)
The Stow-Hardy House is located on the west side of the Battle Road Unit of Minute Man National Historical Park near Meriam’s Corner. It is not near any parking lots, so those in vehicles have no easy way to visit it, and the Battle Road Trail loops around to the backside, so those hiking or biking can’t get a look at it unless they walk out to Lexington Road. Unfortunately, the first opportunity to get to the road doesn’t come until a quarter mile to the east of the house, thus requiring a half-mile round-trip walk along a very busy road with no shoulder just to see it. To top that off, it is not open to the public. NO THANKS!
West end of the Battle Road Trail (click to enlarge)
The Stow-Hardy House gets part of its name from Olive Stow, a widow who lived in a house at this location with her two children during the fighting at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775. However, the current house is not the one that she was living in at that time, but a house that was built around 1786 by Ebenezer Hardy to replace the one that existed during the war. Hardy had married Olive Stow’s daughter, Sarah, and they needed a larger house. Until recently, the current house was thought to be the one standing during the war and was simply called the Stow House, but new evidence refutes this, and it has since been renamed the Stow-Hardy House.
The original house was built around 1689 by Nathaniel Stow. When he died in 1724, his son Joseph inherited the 10-acre farm, house, and barn. Joseph had married Elizabeth Woolly in 1719 and they had four children, though none lived past the age of five. Two years after Elizabeth died in 1757, Joseph, now 67 years old, married 34-year-old Olive Jones and, despite his age, the couple had two children, Sarah and Nathaniel. When Joseph died in 1772, he left Olive a widow and in charge of raising the two children. She did have help from her family, who all lived close by. Her brother, Farwell Jones, lived next door, and his house is also part of Minute Man National Historical Park.
Sarah Stow married Ebenezer Hardy around 1781, and the couple remained living in the Stow House with Olive and Nathaniel. They had thirteen children between 1782 and 1805, and they also became the legal guardian of Nathaniel due to his severe mental problems (he was declared insane at age 20, but who knows what that meant in the 18th century). Thus, there were many people living in a house that was not very big.
In 1784, the Stow House was assessed at £10, whereas the nearby Meriam House was assessed at £60. In 1798, the Stow House was assessed at $600 (U. S. currency changed to dollars in 1792) compared to the Meriam House at $450, so it is certain that sometime between 1784 and 1798 that the old house was either enlarged or torn down and replaced with a larger one.
When Olive died in 1811, two-thirds of the property went to Nathaniel, with the remaining third belonging to Hardy. When he died in 1826, his share went to his wife, Sarah. Their son Isaac eventually bought his Uncle Nathaniel’s share, making him and his mother the owners of the property.
The Hardys continued to live in the house until 1834, at which time they sold the property to Ephraim Meriam and Nathaniel Rice. The house had seventeen owners after that, with the last being Hagop Hovagimian and his family. Hovagimian purchased the house and farm, now 20-acres, in 1945.
When Minute Man National Historical Park was created in 1959, the government was authorized to take ownership of all land within the park boundaries by using eminent domain. By 1972, negotiations were underway with Hovagimian, and in 1975 the house and 17 acres were purchased for $195,000. The deal allowed the Hovagimians to remain living in the house for 25 years. Under the agreement, Hovagimian was supposed to keep the place in repair, but he never put much effort into it seeing that the house would go to the government in 2000.
Upon taking ownership, the National Park Service began a new evaluation of the house. Based on a dendrochronological evaluation of the attic beams—the dating of wood through growth rings—as well as by features in the house that did not come into use until the latter part of the 1700s, the house is now believed to have been built around 1786, and it was a new house, not an extension of the original.
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Last updated on September 5, 2023
