The Samuel Kinsman house at 53 Argilla Road appears as a late Georgian / early Federal period home, generally dated 1750 with a 1777 wing on the east end. The front rooms in the main house have original interior sliding shutters. In the basement is a massive arched brick chimney base that supports 6 brick fireplaces.
History
Samuel Kinsman was born in 1747 and died in 1806. Although the house is named for him, he is not the builder of the main house, which dates to about 1750. Samuel Kinsman received the 53 Argilla property in a bequest from his father, Capt. John Kinsman, who married Hannah Burnham in 1733. Hannah was the daughter of James Burnham Jr., son of James Burnham, whose father was the settler Thomas Burnham. John Kinsman bought the property that now includes 53 Argilla Rd. from James Burnham Junior. The Burnhams and Kinsmans were among the original settlers of Ipswich.
Just down the road from 53 Argilla Road at 43 Argilla is the Thomas Burnham house, built in 1653 on land sold to him by early settler George Giddings, who had been granted a large section of property on Argilla Road. Thomas Burnham bequeathed his house and some land to his oldest son, Thomas. To his younger son, James Burnham, he bequeathed the remainder of the property.
James Burnham was born in 1650 and died in 1709. On March 6, 1677, Samuel Dodd conveyed to James Burnham a house and 12 acres formerly owned by George Giddings. The Dodd land extended to the “Gloucester Road” and was bounded on one side by Heartbreak Road. This corresponds roughly to the location of 53 Argilla Road, the address of the “Samuel Kinsman House.”
After James Burnham purchased this property in 1677, he seems to have built a house at this location. James Burnham Sr. gave his son James “The house I now live in,” in a deed dated January 25, 1719. In 1779, Moses Potter sold to Samuel Kinsman 37 acres of upland and meadow, with a dwelling, barn, and well, “reserving a way through the premises where the way formerly went for Thomas Burnham and Capt John Kinsman.” This is close to the date of the wing on the eastern end, which has rough ceiling beams that are as low as 6’4″. The second floor above it drops down several inches from the main house. The horizontal tie beam, where the wing connects to the main house, was cut to accommodate a doorway, evidence that this wing may have been moved to this location and was added on.
A room in the northwest corner of the main section of the house features 25 hand-planed, unpainted pine panels darkened by years of exposure to smoke from the massive brick fireplace. Wide pine floors, oak gunstock corner posts, and a hand-planed summer beam are First-Period elements from a previous home. It appears that these elements were added to the house for decorative purposes.
Sources
- Family history is from Thomas Franklin Waters’ “Ipswich in the Massachusetts Bay Colony,”
- Waters, Argilla Road
- Waters, “Candlewood, An Ancient Neighborhood in Ipswich with Genealogies of John Brown, William Fellows, Robert Kinsman“
- Proceedings of the Ipswich Historical Society, Dec. 1, 1908, ( Salem, Mass.: Salem Press, 1909)”
Historic Ipswich 