Isaac Winslow House

Isaac Winslow House (AKA: Isaac Winslow Museum)

His house, the 1699 Winslow House, still stands today at 64 Careswell St, Marshfield MA. It has been converted into a historic house museum providing a glimpse into the lives of New England landed gentry prior to the Revolutionary War.

The Isaac Winslow House is the ancestral home of the founding family of Marshfield and was considered an avant-garde South Shore mansion.

Built by Judge Isaac Winslow, the house is virtually untouched by modernization. It has been occupied by a family of governors, generals, doctors, lawyers and judges who helped to create Marshfield and the South Shore. It survives as an example of how well-to-do landed gentry, particularly Loyalists, lived in the years prior to the American Revolutionary War.[2]

Among its occupants were his son, General John Winslow, leader of the Massachusetts militia, who is best known for his role in the expulsion of the Acadians from Nova Scotia—an event commemorated by Longfellow in his epic poem Evangeline. His son, Isaac Winslow, was a Loyalist doctor who quarantined and inoculated many Marshfield and Duxbury residents afflicted with smallpox. Largely because of his actions, his property was not confiscated after the Revolution. Another notable occupant was the manservant Britton Hammon, who after voyaging at sea, being captured by Indians off the coast of Florida, and his subsequent escape and reconciliation with former master John Winslow, wrote his life story, becoming among the first African-Americans to have published his work in the New World.

The house remained in the Winslow family until 1822, and was later owned by Daniel Webster. It was restored and opened to the public in 1920. The house was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2000.