The Air of Contentment

Photo of the colonial-era Fairbanks House in Dedham, Massachusetts

The seventeenth-century Fairbanks House in Dedham, Massachusetts
Photograph courtesy of the Fairbanks House

A sitting room in the Fairbanks House

A sitting room in the Fairbanks House
Photograph courtesy of the Fairbanks House

A scene from the annual fall festival

A scene from the annual fall festival
Photograph courtesy of the Fairbanks House

When Jonathan and Grace Fairbanks were invited to live in Contentment, a Puritan community formed in 1636 (now Dedham, Massachusetts), it was likely to make use of his crucial skill: spinning-wheel maker. Every family needed at least one wheel, to spin flax and raw wool into thread for weaving cloth, says Leslie Griesmer, business manager at the Fairbanks House historic site—“the oldest wood-frame structure still standing in North America.” It is open for guided tours through October, and hosts an annual fall festival, this year on September 29.

Walking around the dark, low-ceilinged dwelling that includes a warren of rooms added over time, it’s easy to imagine hunkering down there on what was then a frontier. The homestead ultimately accommodated eight generations of Fairbankses, who changed very little before turning it into a museum in 1904. To site curator Dan Neff, therefore, it “feels a lot more like a home than many house museums.”

Photographs, furnishings, farm tools, and dishware reflect the lives of previous occupants, giving the interior a ghostly air. A beautiful gateleg, flame-maple table built in the 1650s remains, Neff says: “It’s a giant piece of wood—there aren’t trees here big enough to make this table anymore.” There’s also a pack saddle and a yoke for oxen that are likely from the 1600s, he says, along with a sundial and eight spinning wheels. Whether any were made by a Fairbanks is unclear, but contemporary craftspeople demonstrating spinning, and other traditional skills, will be at the fall festival, along with historic re-enactors portraying soldiers, farmers, doctors, and others who were essential to keeping colonial communities alive. 

Click here for the September-October 2019 issue table of contents

Read more articles by Nell Porter-Brown

You might also like

Trump Administration Aims at Harvard Funding

Part of concerted effort to target campuses labeled antisemitic

Improving Harvard College and Graduate School Discipline

After the 2024 encampment, a Faculty of Arts and Sciences committee recommends changes.

How to Protest Effectively

A Harvard Kennedy School panel on today’s resistance movements

Most popular

Walter E. Fernald

From enlightened care for the intellectually disabled, to eugenics, and back

Harvard Overseer Candidates’ 2025 Priorities

Governing-board nominees’ perspectives on the University’s challenges and opportunities

Bill Gates on AI and Innovation

At Harvard, the Microsoft co-founder discusses his biography—and artificial intelligence. 

Explore More From Current Issue

Harvard's Tom Kane on Effective School Reforms

Tom Kane deploys data to help improve education.

Teen "Grind" Culture and Mental Health

Teens need better strategies to cope with lives lived partly online.

“AI Anxiety”

The Undergraduate on the uneasy collision of technology and writing