About Us
Walpole Historical Society at the Deacon Willard Lewis House
The Walpole Historical Society today is located in the c 1826 Deacon Willard Lewis House at 33 West Street in Walpole MA, opposite historic Walpole Common.
The Society is open to the public most Saturday afternoons from 1 to 4 pm. The House has several rooms furnished in the Victorian style representing the period in which it was occupied by the Deacon Willard Lewis family.
It also has a staffed research library, maintains extensive archives on Walpole history, and has a number of publications for sale.
History of the ca. 1826 Deacon Willard Lewis House
Early Residents
Horatio Wood built this house for Harlow and Sylvia (Fales) Lawrence on a portion of the property Wood and Lawrence had purchased together in 1824 on West Street, near Lawrence’s mill. The Lawrences and their children lived in the house until 1830, when they moved next door to be nearer his mill. By 1850, Edmund W. and Achsah (Hawes) Clap (Clapp) owned and lived in the house with their daughter, Fannie.
Deacon Willard Lewis
In 1864, “Deacon” Willard Lewis (1808 – 1892) and his second wife, Joanna Plimpton (1817 – 1906) bought the house from Clap et al and moved in with their children, Clara and Willard Irving Lewis; as a deacon in the Orthodox Christian Church (formerly at 937 East Street), the honorific prefix always was used with Lewis’s name. The year before, Lewis had moved his cotton batting mill from Morey’s (Turner’s) Pond to a nearby privilege on the Neponset River, previously the site of Harlow Lawrence’s cotton thread mill. After a fire at the mill, Lewis built the first brick mill building in town, which is the building at 75 West Street. Eventually the mill comprised several buildings in back of the Lewis house.
The Kendall Connection
In the early 20th century, the Lewis Mill became the Kendall Company. Later in the 20th century, the house was leased out by the Kendall Company and was painted a bright red, making it universally known as the “Big Red House”.
Acquisition by the Town of Walpole
In 1973, the house was in danger of being torn down. Instead, the house was donated to the Town for historical purposes, just in time for the town’s 250th anniversary in 1974. Since 1975 it has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and has been the home of the Walpole Historical Society.